Back, and Back, and Back a Little More, Future Optional
by Nancy Brown
Summary: Accidentally shot into the past by a time-travelling car, Ianto has to fix his own mistakes or he won't have a future to go back to.
1. Chapter 1

Warnings: violence, character death, mention of sexual assault, prostitution, language, and severe bending of time travel plausibility even taking all three canons into account  
Spoilers: through TW: "Exit Wounds" and through DW: "The Snowmen"  
Beta: Wyldhair and Fide_et_spe both had a hand in making this far more comprehensible than it would have been. All remaining aspects of wtfery are mine alone.  
AN: Written for Reel Torchwood Screening 6. Also fills the Trope Bingo space: au:fusion  
Disclaimer: BBC, Universal, RTD, Steven Moffat, and Robert Zemeckis own these characters and situations, and want nothing to do with this ridiculous fluff piece of faux-Victoriana

* * *

The phone rang three times before Ianto picked up and groggily said, "What?"

The perky concierge on the other end said, "Good morning. This is your wake-up call. We hope you have enjoyed your stay at..."

He dropped the phone back into the cradle and buried his face in the pillow. He'd asked for the wake-up at five sharp, but now was not relishing the idea of getting up so early. He stretched out an experimental hand. The other side of the bed was cold, therefore Jack hadn't been able to sleep again. The only person less pleasant to be around than moody and didn't-want-to-be-here Jack was moody, tired, and still didn't-want-to-be-here Jack. Fuck.

The light level was weird. Jack must have cracked the curtains before he left. Ianto wished he hadn't. They were staying at a luxurious hotel in a suite with a fantastic view of where One Canada Square would have been standing had the building not been condemned and demolished. But then, for once Ianto hadn't been the one to book their room.

The phone rang again. Ianto ignored it. Four rings roused him from the pillow. "What?"

Jack said, "Did you get the wake-up call?"

"Yes." This was mumbled mostly into the pillow.

"Fantastic. I asked them to call you at precisely seven-fifty-three."

Ianto's brain processed this through a haze. Then he shot straight up. "Fuck."

From where he'd dropped the phone, Jack's voice said, "Good morning."

Ianto managed the world's fastest shower, hoping the day's worth of scruffy stubble made him appear a dangerous scoundrel rather than a sloppy recluse. He pulled on his clothes, saving the last of the tying and fastening for the lift. As luck would have it, he didn't meet anyone from the conference on his ride down, but the luck was small: the rest of the attendees were in the room, waiting for him.

Jack wasn't there. Nor was Gwen.

Ianto plastered on his blandest smile for the unfriendly faces of the UNIT and government officials already seated. "Excuse me." He ducked back out into the corridor, turned on his comm, and hissed, "Gwen, where are you?"

There was a pause. Gwen said, "I thought Jack called you. We're out on a retrieval with Martha. You can handle the conference for us, can't you, pet?" The last part was spoken in her best, 'Please?' tone. None of them wanted to stand in the spotlight as UNIT bitched and moaned at them, so of course Jack had found a way out, and tapped Gwen to go with him. Ianto could look on this as a kindness, that Jack had let him sleep, but he knew better. Ianto had drawn the short straw for being the only living Torchwood agent who could keep calm when the shouting began. No-one wanted a repeat of the last conference.

"Fine. But if it turns into anything, phone me." I'll rescue you if you rescue me.

"Done."

Ianto went back into the conference room, grateful for the poor coffee in the urn. He settled into his assigned chair, too aware of the empty seats beside him. He faked polite interest in the speaker who had already begun showing his slides.

The UNIT commander across from him offered a tight smile. "So nice for Torchwood to finally join us. Are your colleagues attending?"

Ianto considered ignoring him to pay closer attention to the opening remarks, but curious looks from the others around him sent hot embarrassment up his neck. "We got word of a retrieval. Captain Harkness and Agent Cooper are investigating."

The tight smile became a smirk. "Is that what we're calling it now?"

Ianto bristled but didn't reply, shifting his chair to face PowerPoint Hell.

The voice dropped, perhaps in deference to the speaker. "Your little club was founded by drunkards and libertines, and that proud tradition continues. I don't know why they even bothered inviting you."

If his face could catch fire, it would. The accusations hit too close to home. Jack may have maintained his sobriety for two years and two millennia, but after his time underground and the sudden deaths of Toshiko and Owen, he'd fallen off the wagon again. Last night he'd spent too much time in the hotel bar before Ianto had taken one for the team, practically shoving his hand down Jack's trousers with a promise of more if he would just come upstairs.

But Jack was out on a mission with Martha and Gwen, and here Ianto was and here he would stay, accepting insults on their behalf.

He twisted his neck to focus on the slides again. Mandated inter-agency cooperation. Security in an unsafe time. Aliens everywhere, and everything suspect. Fuck. Sometimes Ianto really hated his job.

* * *

The call came just after the lunch break. Appreciative, Ianto muttered not even half an excuse before he dashed out the door calling for a taxi as Gwen gave him directions in his earpiece. Twenty minutes of London traffic later, Ianto found himself outside a warehouse in a run-down industrial estate. Jack, Gwen, and Martha waited outside as he paid the driver.

"Now will you tell me what's going on?" He craned his neck for a look at Gwen's scanner, but couldn't make sense of it.

Jack said, "One of Martha's contacts got word late last night. There's a cell of Saxon cultists," Ianto groaned, "working on a project he left behind, and they may have got it functional. A time machine."

He didn't miss the lecherous sparkle as Jack said the words. Ianto glanced at Martha, whose involvement made more sense now. "Why would Saxon build a time machine? You said he had the TARDIS imprisoned."

"That's the thing," she said. "The TARDIS was locked. It could only go to right here, and to the distant future."

"Plus," said Jack, "and I think this was more important, the TARDIS is the most complex artificial intelligence ever designed. She can't be used to manipulate history without a lot of tweaking and overrides. That's why the Doctor can go through time without unravelling history. She's got safeguards that travel with her passengers, just like the translation matrix."

Martha smiled. "I asked him about that when he took me on my first trip. I thought I might step on a butterfly and change history. He told me not to step on butterflies."

"Yeah. He's never been helpful on whys and wherefores. But I've worked on the TARDIS control panel. It's gorgeous." Jack always got that faraway look when he talked about his time with the Doctor, and Ianto always made a point of not being annoyed.

"Why are we here?" he asked again.

Gwen said, "We tracked their work to this warehouse." She waited half a beat in case either of the others volunteered any information, but they were both in 'travelling with the Doctor is the best thing that ever happened to me' euphoria, which would soon nosedive into 'except for that one time, and that one time, and holy fuck that sucked' depression. Gwen smiled weakly. "It's a Torchwood London facility."

Ianto's head swivelled around again. He knew the locations of several TW1 off-site facilities. This one was unfamiliar, but so much of their later work had been top-secret in conjunction with the MoD. Why would a lowly junior researcher have known about it? As the old, well-known hot ball of acid settled in his stomach, he knew this was why Jack had called him in on the retrieval. Ianto was their resident expert on Torchwood London.

Seeing his expression, Jack did manage a momentary shift in his eyes, a soft apology for dredging up bad memories.

"All right. I'm going in then, yes?"

"I'm going with you," said Martha. "I've been tracking these cultists for weeks. Jack and Gwen will cover the exits in case they come out running."

Gwen said, "We called Mickey, but he's looking into something else. He'll be hours."

"What about UNIT?" Surely Martha's presence meant they knew?

Jack said, "We'll inform them after we've neutralised the threat. We can't trust them." So much for inter-agency cooperation, although caution made sense. A number of UNIT troops had been aboard the _Valiant_ with Martha's family and Jack, and some kept their memories of the event. Jack said he'd tracked down most of the survivors and given them Retcon over quiet drinks, but that circled back to how much Jack had been drinking lately. And so it went.

"All right. Dr. Jones?" Ianto held out his arm, which Martha took.

"Mr. Jones."

Gwen sighed. "That was only funny the first three times, you pair."

"Jealous," Ianto diagnosed, and Martha nodded firm agreement. "Let's go."

Inside the warehouse, everything was dark, and it became quickly apparent that the cultists, or whatever they were, weren't home.

"Stay outside," Ianto told Jack and Gwen through the comms. "They might be back soon."

"_Stay safe, both of you,_" Jack countered, but he and Gwen remained where they were whilst Ianto prowled through the vaults of the dead.

Stuck in his own saturnine reverie, he almost didn't hear Martha. "Say again? Sorry."

"I said, I didn't realise you worked for Torchwood London."

He shrugged, shining his torch elsewhere in his discomfort. "It never came up."

"I had a cousin who worked there."

"Adeola Oshodi," Ianto said, a second before she did.

Martha's breath caught.

"When I first got a proper look at you when you walked into the tourist centre, I thought I was seeing a ghost. And then I didn't like to say."

"It's fine. We favour each other. We did." Her face, shadowed in the dark room, fell into a quiet sadness. "Everyone said so, even when we were kids. We used to play together at our granddad's house." They passed a room with weird, spiny creatures preserved in jars filling all the metal shelves along one wall. She shivered. "Granddad was a doctor, and his father, too. The study had jars like this, with pickled brains and worse."

Ianto tried to picture wee little Martha and wee little Adeola peeking like twins into a hazy yellowish-green jar with some poor bastard's syphilitic nose floating inside. He imagined their amused grandfather telling them stories to make the girls squeal in delighted terror. "I guess after that the aliens weren't so frightening."

"No," she agreed, lost in a fond memory. "I wasn't going to ask if you knew her."

Another shrug. "Lisa was friends with her." Lisa was friends with everyone. She had a best mate for all occasions: one best mate for shoe shopping, a different best mate for dress shopping, a best lunch mate, a best-couple-friends-they-could-double-date-with, and so on. Ianto knew he'd been in the pile, kept around as the best mate she'd also loved.

"Who's Lisa?"

This time he did look at Martha more closely. To say that she and Gwen gossiped like old women would be to lose the use of a worn-out but perfect cliché for how she chatted with Jack. Ianto had assumed that, along with the details of his sex life, Lisa would have been mentioned in passing, but Martha's question was entirely innocent.

"She was my girlfriend."

The 'was' still hurt, and the context of how they'd known Martha's cousin said the rest. She took his hand and gave a quick squeeze. Sympathy, and understanding.

As they walked, little details came back. Ianto knew this site. When Yvonne had taken over, she'd cleared out many of her predecessors' old trophies and files, storing them in a series of off-site locations. Didn't fit the new paradigm. Too Old World, she'd held, and not suitable for the Brave New Torchwood she was building. She'd kept the few accoutrements she thought accentuated her own ideals, and stowed the rest away.

Now, with the loss of the main building, and the huge loss of life, these old souvenirs showed the true heart of what remained of Torchwood London.

Martha gave a little gasp. Ianto shone his torch over to what she'd seen. A snarling Sontaran menaced her from behind a transparent partition. As they stared, the alien glowered back, glassy eyes glimmering with a feral light.

"What's a Sontaran doing here?" she breathed, when it became apparent the creature wasn't going anywhere.

"Torchwood London's first case," Ianto explained, his memory refreshed by the little brass plaque at the base of the display. "Learning about how it all got started was part of the new employee orientation. This fellow was part of a notorious alien gang who terrorised part of the city. The founders of Torchwood London neutralised the gang, and that convinced Queen Victoria to charter the location."

Now that he knew where he was, Ianto passed his torchlight over the displays and paintings, resting the beam on a mutton-chopped dour face. "Sir Reginald Poopin. Bastard of a man, by all accounts, but so was everyone in those days. Just think. If the Victorians had had more sex, the whole Empire might have looked different."

Martha laughed. "That's one time we never visited when I was with the Doctor. If the Renaissance is anything to go by, they were having loads of sex and not talking about it."

She was probably right. "My point stands." He gestured with his torch. A second painting displayed Poopin, his unnamed attaché, and the body of what was presumably the same Sontaran. Both men stood proudly over the corpse, Victorian hunters who'd brought down their quarry. They'd brought the body home and stuffed it like a fish. "Torchwood used to practise vivisection. This fellow got off lucky, if you can believe it." He didn't add that his trawls through the records said the practise had continued into the 1980s. He'd never worked up the courage to ask Jack if they'd practised on him.

Beside him, Martha shuddered. "You said he was in a gang. What did they do with the other Sontarans?"

"There weren't any others. One was a lizard queen alien. At least one member was human. There were even rumours that the Doctor was involved with the gang, which would explain why Torchwood cared."

Martha ignored the painting and walked over to the display case again. Clearly, she was thinking through the implications: had Torchwood caught the Doctor, it would be his body on display here, or else his head on the wall in Yvonne's office where the lizard queen had glowered her dead taxidermy eyes at employees during performance reviews. 'If it's alien, it's ours' left no room for mercy.

"Lisa heard a lot of stories about Torchwood London's beginnings," Ianto said, indicating with his torch that they should keep walking. "She said the official story was that the gang were threatening the streets, but we both thought Torchwood just didn't like competition." There'd been quite a few similar organisations working at the time, including Torchwood and the Warehouse. Apparently his own great-grandfather had occupied a minor position in the latter, a factoid he'd discovered during another records search.

"I'm not surprised. You're hardly on best terms with UNIT now."

"True, but we're not going to kidnap General McFly's lover and hold her hostage to lure UNIT to our base before we slaughter the lot."

"I've met General McFly's wife," Martha said. "She could kick your arse."

"She's not some fainting flower of a Victorian lady, though. I doubt the lizard queen's girlfriend even put up a fight."

Back before their lives went to shit, Lisa ate up romantic stories like chocolates, from trashy romances to the tabloids. Give her a film where two people shared a destined, desperate, decadent, or doomed love, and Lisa gulped it down with an erotic novel chaser. Rumours of a fated romance between two women of different species, thrown together by chance in a London slum during a knife fight? Lisa had sighed hugely, pillow pressed to her pretty breast, and she'd wept for the tragedy of Poopin's plan. Ianto had listened with half an ear, indulging her interests even as he painted her toenails for her, and he'd absorbed everything through his hands and his lips, as he kissed her calves, asking, "How long d'you think her tongue was?"

Not wanting to think about Lisa, surrounded here by reminders of what he'd lost, he changed the subject. "When is Tom due back in the country?"

"Next week."

"And the wedding is a week after that?" He didn't need to ask, as Martha's mum had called Jack three times to make sure he still planned on attending, Rift permitting. Ianto made sure Jack's good suit was pressed, and his own best suit as well although he probably wouldn't be able to attend, not and leave Gwen to deal with Torchwood business on her own. There was no question of all three attending, with Rhys in tow.

The black mood descending over his thoughts told him changing the subject hadn't helped. Everything came back to dead friends.

They turned a corner. Both torches shone on a new workroom with signs of recent use. In the centre of the room waited the second most beautiful machine he'd ever seen. Ianto had always loved cars, but this model, nothing he knew, was automotive sex: clean steel lines, black details sharp on the silvery exterior. It purred, even as it sat still, like a puma waiting to pounce. He was instantly in love.

Martha took a quick walk around the car, paying less attention to the body work, and more on the engine. She popped open the bonnet with a deft hand. Ianto shone his torch over the car as a luminary glow, but her tight beam indicated a coral pattern he'd know anywhere.

"Jack, we've found the time machine."

Jack met up with them minutes later, just as Ianto, against Martha's advice, had slipped into the driving seat and let the leather mould to his backside. He wouldn't touch anything. Well, not much.

Jack whistled as he saw the car. "Oh, mama."

Martha giggled. "Should we leave you alone?"

Ianto immediately volunteered to chaperone, but Martha said, "Not the way you've been drooling on the interior." Jack meanwhile joined Martha in her inspection of the engine compartment. His trousers seemed a bit constrictive, the kinky bastard. Ianto glanced behind himself. No back seat. Pity.

Martha tapped her borrowed earpiece. "Gwen, you are missing this. Jack is trying to make out with the car."

In all their ears, Gwen said, _"Snap a photo for me. Someone has to pay attention out here whilst you lot play Top Gear."_

Careful around technology that could easily rip a hole in space-time and destroy this part of the galaxy, Jack only hit the thing with a spanner twice. Then he asked Ianto and Martha to perform a quick inventory of the site while he inspected the vehicle and workshop area for more time machine paraphernalia they'd have to dispose of with care, starting with the plutonium.

"I'll handle the inventory," Ianto told Martha. "Keep him out of trouble, yeah? God knows what he'll do around a functional time machine."

"As long as his trousers stay on, we're fine."

"I can hear you," said Jack.

Amongst the stacks of broken artefacts, decrepit oil paintings, and random detritus one found in old storehouses, Ianto found a box with photostatic copies of old Torchwood London pamphlets and fliers. "Zachary Is a Zombie," "Official Policies on Sharing Information With Area 51," and "A brief history of alien invasions in London, 1875-1900" peered up from disintegrating paper in faded blue copier ink. Mass-produced, handed out to Torchwood employees, and promptly forgotten, this stuff was rubbish, consigned to the company dustbin because the company furnace hadn't got round to burning it all.

This whole site would have to be locked down, gone through, cleaned up, and/or incinerated. Something unhappy crawled in his throat considering the enormity of the task, and his dawning horror that the bulk of the work would fall onto his shoulders. They had shut down the main site, but how many little secret hidey holes had Torchwood stuffed full of crap and forgotten? Torchwood Glasgow technically had a director, though given Archie's precarious health and robust approach to running head-first into danger, that wouldn't last. Ianto would have a century's worth of files and worse to address if he lived to see the day.

As the others pored over the car, Ianto began organising boxes, searching in vain for a hand trolley. He stacked a crate of old fliers in the boot of the car, reckoning he could start a small fire in a barrel outside, make a dent in the rubbish that way.

Jack shooed him away after the third box. "Don't load it. We're not keeping this stuff."

"Then why the inventory?"

"We need to know what we have to destroy or lock down."

"So you are keeping some of it," Martha said with a frown.

"I'll start on the near rooms," Ianto said, knowing he'd have to do the task no matter what.

More time had passed than he'd realised with he heard Jack shouting for him. The summer sky wasn't growing dark, but they'd worked into the evening. Gwen had come inside, apparently deciding the cultists weren't coming back today.

Ianto asked, "Are we breaking for dinner?"

"Not yet. Unless you've found something interesting in the warehouse, we're taking the car to a more secure location and coming back tomorrow with a UNIT crew." Jack twisted his mouth as he said the words, as though he was chewing something with an unpleasant number of legs.

"Right, I'll take it outside."

Jack held up a hand. "I'll drive. The last thing we need is for someone else to drive it into the Ice Age."

"Which you could do yourself," said Gwen.

"Yeah, but I'd come back. Eventually." Jack's attempt at a joke fell hard. "It'll be fine."

Sure enough, as Jack turned the key, the starter caught and spectacularly failed to shoot him anywhere but half a centimetre forward. Ianto operated the controls for the sally port door, opening wide for him to drive out.

Ianto followed to the car park outside. He had a curious vision of the four of them piling into the car and driving off together. Jack parked the car smoothly and got out. His face was shining. "She handles like a dream. Be nice, and I'll let you drive her next."

"Actually, as the designated chauffeur and getaway driver for Torchwood Cardiff, it's my job to thoroughly inspect the vehicles we use for proper road worthiness, etcetera." He managed a straight face as he held out his hands for the keys.

Jack didn't, but he did hand them over. "Try her out."

As the keys touched his hand, Ianto saw movement behind Jack. UNIT? Mickey?

No, cars were parked at the edges of the car park. The Saxon cult members had returned from their errand, and seeing the warehouse open, they must have realised they'd been found out. They were advancing on the two of them.

Even as this crystallised in his mind, gunshots roared out, forcing him away from Jack. More shots were fired toward the warehouse. Jack stood frozen, caught between protecting Ianto, and running back to protect their two friends.

Another bullet settled the issue. Ianto leapt behind the car, digging for his own gun. He saw Jack make a mad dash for the warehouse, shouting at Gwen to shut the inner door.

A bright light flashed, and loud noise. Ianto covered his face, his ears ringing. That had been an explosive, small, perhaps a grenade. Jesus.

His gun finally free, he poked around the side of the car and squeezed off three shots to give Jack enough cover fire to reach the warehouse.

If they had grenades, they'd lob one at Ianto next.

But whatever they had, they threw it not over the car, but directly where Jack had dived under the closing warehouse door, the device landing in what would have been a perfect pass against his backside. The world held its breath.

With a loud roar and a bright flash and a giant WHOOMP, the bomb detonated.

For a moment, Ianto went completely numb.

Jack had been on top of the bomb. He'd have been obliterated in the blast. Being Jack, that didn't mean he wouldn't recover. On the other hand, it didn't mean he would. Schrödinger's explosives. Both Gwen and Martha had been with Jack. There was a remote chance that either was still alive, in critical condition and dying under a tonne of smoking rubble, and a remoter one that Martha had managed to fall back behind the inner doorway. They were both almost certainly dead.

A sob choked halfway up his throat before emerging as a scream. The Saxon fucks turned to see him. Ianto had their sudden, undivided attention. He had a gun. They had more guns and probably more grenades.

Shit.

Instinctively, he dove back into the car and slammed the door as the first bullets sprayed the bodywork. Swearing, terrified, he squeezed the ignition, dropping the gears into a hard reverse. He was going to fuck up the transmission, and it didn't matter. He backed away from the building, easily hitting fifty in reverse. He would run into something. And with the ruin of the warehouse receding in front of him and the cultists swarming into the gap, that didn't matter, either.

Backup was coming. He could flee, take the car and go, come back with reinforcements. He knew he wouldn't. As he backed away, the Saxon people marched after him in two lines, guns still firing. Without even considering what he was dong, he hit the brakes.

This was a bad idea. But he wasn't leaving the site, not with a one in a million chance that Gwen and Martha were still alive, not with the near-certainty that Jack's body, in pieces, would gasp back to life broken and screaming and alone. All he had to do was get rid of these bastards between him and them.

Ianto dropped the car into first, and aimed for third, right between the two lines of cultists. Behind them was the building. He'd never be able to stop. He'd plough into them, plough into the wreckage, wind up just as dead as his friends.

He gunned it.

The cultists realised what he planned as he screeched towards them. Determination turned to fear. The brighter ones dashed to the sides. Ianto saw the frozen face of the closest one, caught in a rictus of fear, right as the car reached him.

And reached 88 KPH at exactly the same moment.

Ianto tensed for impact.

White light followed by the thunder of crashing wood was utterly different from the damp, wet meaty thud he'd been expecting. He shouted as beams splintered around him, scratching in fiendish squeals against the metal frame. His foot jammed on the brakes, jerking him and the car to a stop. Whatever he'd crashed into teetered a moment longer, then crashed completely atop him like the world's last tree house surrendering to the termites.

The car hissed around him. Bits of wood settled with small cracks. Everything was dark.

"What the fuck?" he repeated to himself again and again.

No cultists. No warehouse. He appeared to have drawn the attention of three horses whose stable was no longer present, which (horses?) meant he'd soon be drawing the attention of whoever kept the horses.

Ianto attempted to start the car, was relieved to note that it still started, and drove over the wrecked stable. Barn. Whatever. The horses followed him.

"Sorry," he said to the confused horses as he drove slowly away.

He barely got down the street before his situation settled into his head. He'd been in an industrial estate in London. Now he was somewhere rural. Ianto _hated_ rural. Even before the crazy hillbilly cannibals had tried to turn him into starters for a Torchwood feast, he'd wanted as little as possible to do with the rural parts of the country as he could arrange.

A red light on the dash kept drawing his eye, and he kept ignoring it. If he didn't look at the petrol gauge, he could pretend he wasn't in deep trouble. He kept the car's speed low, peering around him for bearings. The buildings were squat, none of them more than two or three storeys, all wood or brick. Gas lamps, few and far between, lit the murk.

The car sputtered. He let his eyes linger on the gauge, which was conveniently located right beside what appeared to be a digital calendar. Please don't let it be a digital calendar, he thought. Please.

Beside the empty fuel gauge, the display read: "3 March 1885"

* * *

tbc


	2. Chapter 2

As the car died under him, Ianto felt himself gibbering in fear. Most of the gibbering was the word, "Shit!" repeated over and over like some scatological prayer. He was in the past, in the fucking 1880s, and his time machine had made the same sound as that poor Citroen Mam had driven did before the rusted out thing had to be towed away. He was utterly fucked. Panic made perfect sense.

Think!

He needed a secure place to store the car. If he got it working again, he could get home. Ianto had no illusions of fixing the time car himself, but he was already mulling over ideas.

His jaunt through time had spit him out in the same industrial estate he'd left, and it appeared that in this, he was in luck. A veritable warren of workman's sheds, private factories, and similar huddled together like eager children at their nurse's hem. A bit of searching and peering through cracks found him a shed that showed all the signs of being abandoned for several months. The many skills he'd picked from both youthful indiscretion and adult vocation soon jimmied the door open enough to push the car through.

Even now, as he rested, panting and admiring his own work, the time car seemed paused rather than stalled out. Her reflective surface glimmered darkly even in the low light of a lamp he'd found. Her jet black lines murmured like an insatiable lover whispering filthy suggestions (a situation with which Ianto was very familiar). He found a rotted old canvas and felt bad about covering her sleek beauty with such rags, but no help for that, not and keep her safely hidden. A dull shiver crept up his spine at the too-familiar thought.

Out in the (he presumed) London streets, everything was different, and everything was the same. Even now at the wee hours of the morning, people bustled about their business. Night workers, building their dreams by gaslight, filled the air with the sounds of hammer and saw. Ladies of a more flexible approach to the trade-offs between money and time plied their services. Men and women both on their own errands hurried by, not seeing, not wanting to be seen. Everywhere was smoke, and thin, orange lamplight, and the smells of four million people eating, and farting, and living in a time before showers.

Thoughts of eating, and a friendly (but not too friendly) nod to one of the ladies of the night suddenly put an uncomfortable thought in the forefront of his mind. His pockets held notes that would never be accepted in this time. He needed money. Perhaps he could join up for one of the crews digging tunnels everywhere? The work would be hard, but he couldn't picture there being any questions more difficult than, "Have you got your own shovel?" Which he didn't. He abandoned that idea.

As he walked, he became aware of a scuffle going on down the street and against his better judgement, he hurried his steps. Torchwood meant running towards gunshots and screams. There had been no screams here, not yet. A gang of tough-looking men had surrounded a young woman, backing her against a wall.

Ianto tried to walk by. This was history. One thing Jack had drilled into everyone's head: when in the past, don't fuck with history. Admittedly, Jack had promptly gone into the past and literally attempted to fuck his own namesake from history, but Jack was ever a fan of the "Do as I say and not as I do, unless you're doing me" school, and Ianto his deliriously willing pupil.

He saw her face. Her jaw was set, but she was clearly frightened. What the hell. If he was going to step on a butterfly, it may as well be a deserving butterfly. He tapped the closest man on the shoulder, and had his fist swinging by the time the bloke turned around to see him.

The bastard dodged and got in a right hook to Ianto's kidneys. The air went out of him and he exaggerated his fall, grabbing the knee that was heading to his face and twisting hard. The man fell to his arse, even as his friends turned their attention away from their lady friend to Ianto.

As it turned out, this was a terrible mistake on their parts. The girl's hand went to her neat bun, and removed two large hairpins holding it in place. A moment later, two of her would-be attackers screamed, clutching their wounded elbows. Ianto held off his own thug, but watched as the woman became all knees and teeth, kicking and biting the bastards in every place she could make contact.

The moment the fourth one was on the ground, courtesy of Ianto's forehead, she grabbed his hand. "Hurry," she said, out of breath, and dragged him away from the injured men. "They'll be around in a second."

He ran with her, pausing for a moment around a corner as a carriage pulled to the kerb where the men lay. A cloaked figure emerged, sword clenched in a long, elegant arm. Odd, he thought, and far more so when the veil she wore slipped for half a second.

"Run!" said his new friend, not even pausing to see the same peculiar green scales distracting Ianto as the lizard queen bent over the bodies.

They ran through alleys he couldn't name until they emerged many streets over. They both turned at the whistle of a policeman. Ianto rushed off again, this time into the road.

He felt rather than heard the startled cry of the cab driver. Ianto's head collided with something definitely wooden, and definitely solid.

* * *

Ianto woke, head aching, body sore in ways that suggested he hadn't spent the night with Jack, or at least not spent the night in the fun way with Jack.

The room he lay in was dark, comforting. He tried to speak and instead groaned.

Immediately, a voice said, "Good. You survived." Male. No-one he could immediately place.

Ianto managed to sit up. "Am I in hospital?"

"You are being cared for. I am your nurse. You are recovering satisfactorily from your injury, and should be fit to die in battle within a short time frame."

Odd joke to make, he thought, but if the nurse was joking, he probably would be okay. "Thank God." He fell back against the pillow. "I had the worst dream. My partner and our friends blew up in an explosion, then I was sent over a century into the past."

"Then you indeed have good news. You are not in the past. You are still here in the modern day of 1885."

The nurse sparked a match, lighting a small, smoky lamp on the bedside table. As Ianto processed his words with horror, he also processed that the so-called nurse was a god-damned Sontaran, who greeted him with a potatoey smile. Ianto grabbed for his gun, when he discovered he had also misplaced most of his clothes. Which brought into view his second companion in the room.

Ianto clutched the blanket around his waist as the girl he'd saved smiled at him cheekily. "Strax here is a friend a mine. He helps us."

"Us?"

She gave a remarkably descriptive shrug. "Those of us who might not be on the right side of the law all the time."

"Ah." So he was dealing with thieves, ruffians, possibly a prostitute. Perhaps he hadn't interrupted an assault. Perhaps she'd been stealing from one of the men and had been caught. Alternately, Torchwood had nearly destroyed the planet on several occasions, and he was stuck here in the past courtesy of the former Prime Minister, who'd really been an alien in disguise. He wasn't in a position to judge.

She said, "You were very brave stepping into the fight like that. Not a lot of blokes would of done."

"Sure they would," he said, mouth on autopilot as he thought. Stuck. Past. Needing trousers desperately. "Could I please have my clothes?"

"Sure thing, Mr. Armani."

Ianto bit down on that particular question as the girl passed him his trousers, holding onto them longer than necessary. "I didn't get your name, miss."

"Jenny. Jenny Flint." The name was familiar, like the name of someone from a book. She didn't look much like a book heroine, unless it was the more romantic type of book written for a certain wistful kind of audience. Her face was on the plain side of pretty, with a beauty mark he found distracting.

"And now there is the matter of payment, Mr. Armani," said Strax, wiping his hands on a filthy cloth.

"I don't have any money that's good here. And why do you keep calling me that?"

Jenny passed his waistcoat over. "It's in your clothes, innit? Fancy bloke, with your name sewn in." She hesitated. "Unless you lifted them from some Italian fellow."

Ianto grabbed the waistcoat. "I prefer to think of it as borrowing." He thought for a second over a lie. "But his wallet was full of Italian lira. I don't have English money." That would do unless they'd gone through his wallet, which he admitted to himself was likely and he'd have done the same.

Nevertheless, Strax passed him the wallet without comment. "Then you will owe me. And I will expect interest on the loan."

Fantastic. Now he owed an unknown amount of money to a Sontaran who, for all he knew, may have already harvested Ianto's spare organs. If he truly was in 1885, he needed to keep closely in mind that he had no access to modern medicine, even penicillin, and diseases ran rampant here. Cholera was common in London during the nineteenth century, and pox, weren't they? He hadn't any idea when or where to avoid. He was trapped in the past with just enough future knowledge to get himself into trouble.

"Jack."

Strax and Jenny exchanged glances. "Who?"

Ianto let his mouth write a cheque and hoped he could cash it later. "I have an acquaintance I may be able to look up to ask for money." And help. Definitely help. Who else knew what it felt like to wash up on the shores of the past? Who else might be able to repair the time car to get him home?

"He live around here?" Jenny asked.

"I'm not even certain he's in London currently. I know he travelled. I mean, he travels." When was the Ellis Island visit? Ianto listened to Jack's stories whenever Jack was willing to tell them, but he hadn't paid much attention to dates. He'd always been too caught up in the enormity of Jack's life, and the people he'd encountered along the way. "Can you tell me where I'd find, erm." He watched their faces carefully, wondering how to ask.

Back in the day, after Lisa died and before Suzie died again, Ianto had planned out what should have been a pleasant a one-night stand with his boss. The man had expressed his interest many times, accepting Ianto's rebuffs as temporary setbacks. At the same time, he'd demonstrated his interest in Gwen, Owen, Tosh, DI Swanson, that new bloke who brought the pizzas, blowfish, sentient notes of music, and a particularly feisty (Jack's word) lamp. Jack was by his own accounts an incredible lay, and Ianto had been in a near-psychotic fugue from blue balls. An orgasm or two with someone who didn't give a damn about cuddling later was just the ticket. Ergo, his offer had been made with the full knowledge that Jack would get him off, and would go out the next day, or even later that night, looking for a new playmate. Ianto would be too blissful at having had his cock sucked to give a damn. After Jack left, after Abaddon, Ianto had to admit the one-night stand had lasted months. His ensuing identity crisis hadn't been helped by Owen's constant picking. He'd retreated back into his own head for a while, researching the past because the future was overwhelming.

He knew, watching his two rescuers, that certain activities were punishable by prison terms in this era. Asking about the location of London's current gay scene would probably get him arrested, if not killed outright.

"Sailors," he said after a moment. "Jack spends a lot of time around sailors. Where would I find the places they'd relax ashore?"

"I'll take you," said Jenny. "In case you forget your way back."

"Thanks." He wondered if he could lose her in a crowd. She didn't seem the type to be easily lost. She also wasn't the type to turn her back as a man dressed in front of her. Embarrassed, Ianto tried to put on his clothes under the blankets whilst she grinned and the Sontaran nurse watched impassively.

"Come on," she said, taking his hand as soon as he was ready. To his surprise, she didn't let go as she led him onto the street, then took his arm like they were acquainted. "Don't mind Strax," Jenny said a street away. "He's grumpy all the time, but his heart's in the right place. He helps out those that can't help themselves."

"What about you?"

"I do the same when I can. There's terrible men out there. Say what you like about filching a purse, there's plenty of men who'll kill you as soon as look at you, and the ones as looks like nobs is the worst. Too fine for this street, but happy to rough up a prossie and leave her bleeding."

A simmering growl underwrote her words. She'd fought like an animal, he recalled.

Jenny brightened up, the smile on her face making her look simple. If he hadn't seen her shrewdly size up the exact force she'd needed to crush a man's bollocks with her chin, he'd have been fooled. "That's why he needs paying. Nobody eats for free. It takes a lot of scratch to patch up the poor folks who wander his way."

"He didn't give me an amount."

"We'll let you know."

The ideal way to track Jack down would be to follow the string of satisfied smiles and broken hearts he trailed behind him. Barring that, a few inquiries later found them outside a smoke-filled pub. "This might be too dangerous for you," Ianto said to his companion. As they'd talked, he discovered that she was quite nice, intelligent in a street-smart fashion, and in another time (literally) someone he wouldn't mind getting to know better. In this time, he would have to explain to this century's Jack Harkness who he was, and doing so in front of a woman from the 1800s would not end well.

"What might be too dangerous?"

"The pub. Dangerous men inside, and all. You should wait here."

Jenny stared at him. "Which of us do you think is better off going inside, then?" He became aware of a blade sliding neatly out of her sleeve, then tucking in again. She hadn't used it last night. What was this woman like?

They made their way together through the dark pub. Tables were set up in the back, where serious men, or at least men who wanted others to think they were serious, held cards in falsely languid hands. Ianto found a table nearby, and Jenny sat with him, watching the players.

At one table, Captain Jack Harkness sat with his own hand, a very small pile of money in front of him. Everything about him said he was nervous, from the drumming of his leg under the table, to the light sweat on his brow. The other men at his table, most of them in very finely-manufactured clothes, gave each other smirks as they raised the bets. The pot in the centre got bigger. Jack's pile went away entirely.

The bet went up again. Two of the others folded.

Jack played with the frilled collar of his shirt, casting glances at the pile and his hand. His expression said he couldn't afford to lose, but he also couldn't meet the bet. He asked a passing server for some paper, and carefully wrote out something.

"What're you putting in?" asked one of his opponents.

"The deed for my horse." The words came out dry as Jack put the paper in the middle.

The other two men still in the game looked at the deed. One folded. The other pulled Jack's paper out, tore it in two, and scrawled his own name. Ianto read: "1 HORS" spelled in block letters.

"I call," said the other player.

Jack had four kings.

The game broke up after that, and Ianto moved closer to Jack. "Hands off," Jack said amiably as he gathered his winnings into a bag. He gave Ianto a second look. "Although we can discuss your hands later."

"Captain Jack Harkness?"

Jack's eyes went flat. "Are you a copper?"

"No, I'm a friend." How much to risk? Ianto went with everything, dropping his voice so only Jack could hear. "Or I will be, a century from now."

Jack's eyebrows raised. Then he shoved the last of the money away. He took Ianto's arm, and his face fell slightly as Jenny took the other firmly. "Let's go talk, friend."

"We can't talk here?" asked Jenny.

"Not after Jonas finds out I beat him wagering an imaginary horse."

The three of them made their way out into the street, Jack pausing enough to show the IOU scrawl to the hostler holding his new horse. "I know a guy who can sell this in an hour," Jack explained, only looking a little stupid as he led the horse along with them.

He looked at Ianto. "So we know each other?"

Ianto nodded, then nodded meaningfully at Jenny. "I was telling this young lady here, whom I just met," he said a bit loudly, "that you and I are old friends. I owe her and her friend money."

"And I happen to have some. Why is this my problem?"

There was playing fair, and then there was Jack. Ianto said, "Because a man in a blue box would want you to."

That stopped him cold, but not half so cold as Jenny's added, "You know the Doctor?"

* * *

They wound up in another pub, far away from the men Jack had just fleeced. Jack had sold his horse to another man, and the bag of coins he'd received had been secreted somewhere in Jenny's skirts.

"I heard there was a Sontaran working in London," Jack said, bringing them drinks. Ianto took his beer, Jenny her sherry. Jack had a glass of something brown. Ianto stared at him as he took a long drink. Jack stared back. "What?"

"Nothing." He covered with his own drink.

Jenny said, "The Doctor dropped Strax off here a few years ago. Saved my life, too. Strax and me, we're good mates. Save the world, one soul at a time."

"Which Doctor did you meet?" Jack asked, more than curiosity in his tone.

Jenny shrugged. "The Doctor."

Ianto said, "He changes his face. I don't remember the term he uses."

"Regeneration," Jack said flatly. "It's like being reborn. He doesn't die." Ianto could practically read the thoughts in Jack's mind, wondering what had caused his condition, wondering if he himself was a Time Lord now.

"Oh. Well, I don't know about that. He was young. Sweet face." She scrunched up her own face in thought. "Big forehead and chin?"

"Jack travelled with the Ninth Doctor," Ianto said. "Before his regeneration into the Tenth. I don't know one with a big face."

"Regenerated? My Doctor died?"

"Right after he left you on the Game Station."

Jack watched him closely. "And you know this because?"

"You told me."

Jenny looked at Ianto. "You're a time traveller, then? You should have told Strax. He'd be so pleased." She herself seemed very pleased. "I've always wanted to see the things he talks about. The women in the future, they're treated the same as men, yeah?"

"By my time," Jack said. "Not sure about his. Speaking of, when exactly are you from?"

"2009. Cardiff. You've been."

"Yeah."

In for a penny. "I need to get back there, but my time machine is out of power."

"Join the club. Wait, you have a time machine?"

Ianto nodded. "Based on TARDIS technology. With which you are familiar, having worked on the control panel before."

"Yeah, I have." A slow smile spread over Jack's features, not a pleasant smile, nor the charm-filled smile Jack gave someone he was sizing up for play time. Jack was staring at him like he'd looked at the marks in the pub after he'd taken the pot: fat little fishies just waiting to share their delectable plumpness with the angler baiting his hook.

"Show me the time machine. I'll see what I can do."

"You can't come with me. You don't get to 2009 that way."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

Jack sat back, disappointment draped over him sullenly.

Ianto said, "But I can tell you that you do see him again." The mood lifted, just a touch, and Ianto used the opening. "If you'll help me. Also, I'll need a place to stay whilst we fix the time machine."

"You could stay with me n' Strax," said Jenny brightly. "We can always budge up a bit."

He turned to Jack. "I was hoping I might borrow your sofa."

Jack stared at him without comprehension. "Sofa?"

"Do you have a home?"

"I rent a room, yeah." Whether he caught Ianto's desperate look, or had his own reasons, Jack said, "You can stay with me."

"Thanks."

Jenny looked disappointed, much more so than he'd believe. "Are you sure?"

"Yep," Ianto said. "Thank you for your help. Give Strax my thanks, too." He made his tone as friendly yet dismissive as he could within the bounds of politeness. He had a strong suspicion that impoliteness would be fatal.

Jenny frowned, getting to her feet. "Well. Good luck to you, then. Captain, Strax'll probably be by. Try not to shoot him."

Ianto watched her go. Jack's gaze lasted longer on her departing bottom, but that was Jack all around. He'd made a friend, thus he'd make an excuse to say hello again under more informal circumstances. And this was over a century ago, and there was no point in being upset or jealous, any more than there was a point to it in his own time.

"Nice girl," Ianto said.

"I don't know if 'nice' is the right word," Jack replied, taking a long drink. "You probably shouldn't sleep with her."

"What?"

"She clearly fancies you. I'm far enough in my own past that it won't matter, but you're within a century of your birthday. You'll wind up shagging your great-grandmother or something."

Ianto flashed on a photograph he'd seen of the severe, stocky woman who'd birthed his grandfather and six other children, and he shuddered. "Not a problem. I'm seeing someone back home."

"Who hasn't been born yet." Jack took another drink. Ianto wondered what rationalisations Jack was going over in his own head right now. Rose Tyler wouldn't be born for another century. The Doctor was outside of time. This Jack was still closely tied to them.

"I just want to get home. Can you help?"

Jack finished his drink. "Let's look at your time machine."

* * *

The expression of delight and lust on Jack's face as Ianto pulled off the tarpaulin was identical to the one he'd worn in 2009. Would wear. Ugh. Ianto hated time travel grammar. His Jack chose to view his own life as a line, and spoke as such. He used past tense for the wars he'd fought in on planets which hadn't yet been colonised in Ianto's time.

"That's gorgeous," said this Jack. "Who built her?"

"Long story. Can you help me get her running again?"

"Maybe. I'll need the keys of course." He held out his hand. Ianto instinctively backed away. "What?"

"Swear to me you won't take them and go."

"Your car doesn't work."

"Swear, Jack." This Jack was a con man and a cheat. Ianto daren't trust him.

"No." Jack folded his arms. "You came to me for help. Either you trust me or you don't, and if you pick option B, the door is right there."

"You're in my shed."

"Your borrowed shed. Keys."

Ianto hesitated, but he had no choice. Jack took them with a triumphant jingle and a smirk, then slid into the driver's seat to pop the bonnet. Ianto prayed he hadn't just made a fatal error in judgement.

They stared under the bonnet together as Jack caressed the coral interior with an intimate gesture Ianto knew well. "As far as I can tell, nothing's broken. Where's the fuel cell?"

A little prodding and poking opened a latch for the boot. The fuel gauge on the dash had said empty, and now Ianto could see why. The conversion unit held nothing but fumes. "That can't be good."

"What does it run on?"

"You said plutonium."

"I did?"

They stared at each other for a moment. Ianto mentally kicked himself. "I mean, I thought I heard it was plutonium."

"Future me told you, didn't I?"

Ianto nodded slowly. "You said it gave the engine a kick. You were explaining the mechanism to someone else. I wasn't paying close attention. I think the rest of the engine might work on petrol. How many years until the petrol station is invented?"

"Too many."

"Oh, cracking," Ianto muttered, even though he'd known.

Jack looked around. "What's cracking?"

The open boot caught Ianto's attention again. He still had crates of the useless pamphlets. He doubted there would be any labelled "Tom's Broken Time Machine" but this was Torchwood. He opened a box and rooted around, setting aside historical documents and advice for employees who found themselves body-swapped. ("Michael and Mary See How the Other Half Lives.")

"Plutonium doesn't exactly grow on trees," said Jack, casting a non-too-casual glance on the pamphlets. Ianto would have to burn them. He tried to stop Jack picking one up, but Jack had already flipped open "Gerald's New Genitalia" to examine the helpful clip art diagrams. "Unless you want to advance the atomic age on Earth by sixty years, you're probably here for the duration." Jack turned the pamphlet sideways for a better look, ignoring Ianto's agitation.

"I have to get home." Ianto dug out his mobile phone. "I have a job, and a life. Look." He pulled up a snap he treasured: the five of them together at the pub, looking very nearly like normal people. Martha had snapped a few photos and texted them to Gwen. If Ianto didn't get back, he had no hope of saving Martha and Gwen, nor of going back to his Jack. Jack would wake up alone, and it would kill him.

Jack took a long look at the snap. "Look at that." He rubbed his jaw. "I keep my hair."

"Yes, you're just as handsome as ever," Ianto said impatiently.

"Too bad it's a faked picture." Jack handed the mobile back. "That chap's hair is cut off."

"No, it's not." Ianto glanced at his snap, and then horror set in. Owen stood there, not yet ready to smile in his new undeath, but starting to thaw. He wore a concert t-shirt from 2006. He had no hair. "The phone must be going bad."

Jack took the mobile back. "You didn't happen to run into anyone else while you were here, did you?"

"Just Jenny and Strax."

"How did you meet them?"

"Jenny was seeing the worse end of a street fight. I intervened. Then I got hit by a coach."

"Busy day." Jack inspected the photo. "Maybe she was supposed to die in the fight. You can't just go around changing the past."

Ianto thought about it. He didn't see how letting someone die would change Owen's history. If Jenny was some kind of ancestor for him, obviously letting her live would be better. God alone knew how they'd be related; Owen had never even known his father, leading Ianto to speculate about Jack's continued investment in their colleague. Speaking of contaminating the time line. Ianto sighed. "I dunno." He'd seen the lizard queen at the site. "I did see something weird. There's a lizard alien running around London."

"I've heard." Jack's presence in the city started to make sense. Sontarans and lizards in Victorian London? Surely the Doctor would be interested, and come investigate, and rescue him from his miserable life. Ianto was overall grateful to the Doctor for many reasons, most of which had to do with keeping the planet in one piece and being ultimately responsible for Jack's presence in Ianto's life. At the same time, there were days when all Ianto wanted was to take a swing at him.

"What if the lizard queen was supposed to kill her?" That didn't sound right, though. Something nibbled at the toes of his memory, a recent conversation. Worry filled his stomach as he tore through the stack of pamphlets again until he came up with one he remembered reading on his first day of employment. Sir Reginald Poopin's xeroxed face stared sternly at him from one corner.

Ianto skimmed the story of Poopin's interest in aliens, piqued after having sustained an unspecified injury in an alien attack. Ianto read until he found what he was looking for: Silurian lizard queen, Sontaran warrior, human bait. Worse, so much worse, as he glanced through the rest of the paper, the words had begun to fade at the end, and more faded as he read. His mouth went dry, and his stomach heaved as he folded the pamphlet, storing it again.

"Time can be rewritten, yeah?"

"Yeah." Jack would know.

"I fucked it up. The lizard queen wasn't supposed to kill her. She was supposed to fall in love with her."

* * *

tbc


	3. Chapter 3

Jack had acquired tea for Ianto, and something golden in a bottle for himself. Not for the first time, Ianto recalled that although he performed many little tasks for Jack, Jack had always been perfectly capable of doing them for himself. He no doubt found Ianto's role as batman/butler more a novelty than a necessity. Around this time in his thought process, Ianto would remind himself how little Jack really needed him, and how the sane thing for both of them would be to end their affair before they started pretending otherwise. That usually was directly followed by seeing Jack, and feeling that uncomfortable mixed rush of emotions, and sanity could push off, thank you.

He drank his tea, and thought about time.

"If your friend Jenny was supposed to be rescued from her attackers by the Silurian, then maybe she developed a knight in shining armour complex."

"But I got in the way."

"Which would explain why she was making eyes at you instead."

To be quite fair, he didn't mind at all. Women had never singled him out as particularly good-looking. Lisa had been a rare and welcome exception, frank in her admiration both for his looks and his mind. It felt nice to be the receiving end of the attention, which had been a large factor in his choice to shag the man sitting across from him. Jack's continued interest and unashamed admiration had performed wonders with Ianto's self-confidence. As much as he enjoyed the thought of Jenny being attracted to him now, he'd found the person who fit his own damage best, and he knew her heart was far better suited to another.

He wondered if he'd ever have the chance to thank his Jack for teaching him this lesson by example.

"If she doesn't fall in love with the lizard queen, Torchwood won't approve the charter for the London branch."

"Silurian. Who's Torchwood?" Jack's eyes were innocent.

Ianto looked away, staring into his tea instead of at Jack. Oh, they're the organisation who'll capture and torture you to death until they get bored, then they'll make you an offer you can't refuse. From their inestimable ranks, you'll make loads of friends and take dozens of lovers, all of whom will die miserably. You'll wind up in charge after everyone else is dead, a king sitting on a throne of bones. I'm so sorry.

"It's the company I work for." Ianto pulled out his mobile again. "Owen told me that if it wasn't for Torchwood, he'd have been dead within six months after his fiancée was killed." Toshiko wouldn't have been better off, probably dying in a UNIT cell. Ianto would never have met Lisa, never met Jack. He'd be alive, but still unsure of himself and his life. Eight hundred people, including Adeola and Lisa, wouldn't have been murdered by Daleks and Cybermen. Owen and Tosh were still dead, too. Torchwood hadn't saved them, only delayed the inevitable.

"Without the pair of them, your history unravels. This is bad."

"Easily solved, though. I'll just explain to Jenny she needs to meet the lizard queen, introduce them, and time should be sorted out again." Guilt reminded him of their fate, but what could he do?

"Not so fast," said Jack. "You'll wind up making things worse if you just tell her."

"I don't see how. She seems intelligent. She knows about time travel."

"So do you. Think about your sweetheart back home for a minute."

Ianto took a long look at Jack and hoped his face didn't give everything away. "All right."

"Now picture Jacob von Hogflume walking up to you."

"Who?"

Jack opened his mouth to explain, then said, "Never mind. Someone you don't know walks up to you as you were ten years ago to explain that whatever your plans might be, it's your destiny to fall in love with this person you haven't even met. Here's their picture, oh and by the by, if you don't, the world will end. Think about what that would do to you."

"But Jenny was supposed to meet her last night. She's obviously at the right moment."

"And if that imaginary time traveller had told you the night before you met your current flame the same thing, what would you have done?"

He didn't have to consider. "I wouldn't have believed them. I'd still have done everything exactly the same."

Jack smiled at him knowingly. "No, you wouldn't. Armed with the knowledge, you'd either give up on the person you were already seeing and accept your destiny, or you'd run as fast and as hard as you could away from it. Both choices would be a disaster for you and your lover. If you chose to be with them, you'd never know if you stayed for love or because you were scared, and if you left, you'd destroy your own future."

"Third option. I'm my own time traveller, and I play Christmas Yet To Come for myself, and make sure young me knows he's going to break my heart."

Jack rolled his eyes. "And that's how I know you're not a Time Agent. Free advice: pretend you don't know anything about your future, and maybe it'll still be there when you get home."

"Says the man wallowing in future knowledge." Not that Jack shared. Not that he knew or told them anything useful, not until it was far too late and all the bodies that could be found were buried.

"I'm a trained expert. You're a monkey with a Gatling gun. I use what I know when there's no other way. You can't tell Jenny. If she's supposed to fall in love with this Silurian woman, she has to do it on her own terms."

Jack was right, the annoying prick. In no future did the fantasy end well of walking up to Jenny and explaining to her that she needed to start shagging a lizard woman. "Then how on Earth do I fix this?"

Jack's face scrunched in thought, then smoothed out in delight. "I have the perfect plan!"

"Does it involve inviting them both into your bed for a fling and hoping they'll fall for each other mid-shag?"

Jack paused, and said without any credibility, " ….no?"

Ianto resisted the urge to sigh. "Not every problem can be solved by the quick application of your penis."

"Hey, there's nothing 'quick' about my penis, thank you."

He let this pass before it turned into a pass. "You're in London because of rumours. Did you have any leads on the lizard queen?"

"Silurian," Jack enunciated slowly. Ianto bit back a snappish reply. Jack wasn't all human himself. He might shoot aliens when required, but he considered it basic courtesy to pronounce their names properly, and to ask for their numbers in the morning. "As far as I can tell, she's been spotted in the same area of the city as Jenny and Strax, but she's rarely spotted. She covers her tracks well."

"Then we need to attract her attention."

Jack put his hand up between them. "There is no 'we' here. I'll get the time machine up and running. You figure out how to play matchmaker."

"You said there was no hope on the time machine."

Jack stretched back in his three-legged stool. From what was surely too small a pocket, he produced a much-folded pamphlet. Ianto recognised the clip art cover to "A brief history of alien invasions in London, 1875-1900." He grabbed for it, but Jack was faster.

"You shouldn't have that."

He was met with a familiar grin that showed a bit too much teeth. Jack might have a matinee-idol smile, but so did the animatronic star of _Jaws_. He said, "I'm looking for signs of the Doctor. I had to know if he was coming to visit."

"I told you..."

Jack interrupted. "While I was peeking, I noticed there's good news. The Lysans are going to invade in a week."

"This is good news?"

"Their weapons discharge with a particular power cell that I may be able to rig the car to use. Get your speed up to 88 KPH at the moment you're shot by a Lysan cruiser, and you go back to the future."

"In the middle of an alien invasion."

Jack scoffed. "Hardly an invasion. Lysans are allergic to Earth's oceans. I'll spray them with a little enchantment from under the sea, they'll go home before tea."

This time, Ianto did grab the pamphlet. "You can't read through the future to find out things like that."

"I didn't," said Jack, annoyed. He tried to snatch the crumpling paper back. "I dated a Lysan guy once. That's how I know about the ocean thing. Now I'm using my advance knowledge of the future to get your pathetic arse home."

They glared at each other across the rickety work bench. Ianto dropped his eyes first. "Sorry."

"She'll need help," Jack said.

"Who?"

"The Silurian." He'd switched subjects as if the argument had never happened. Forgiveness had always been one of Jack's virtues. That, or as Ianto had often suspected, despite possessing the relative lifespan of a giant tortoise, Jack also possessed the relative memory of a goldfish. "You said she had scales, so she's not impersonating a human. She'll need human helpers, servants. People to fetch and buy and do for her."

"Right. She can't just walk into Marks & Spencer."

"Into what?"

"Never mind. Go on."

"That's all I've got. She'll have human agents working for her, which means she'll have money to pay them. Find the money, find the servants, find the Silurian."

Ianto shuddered again at the mental image of Yvonne's wall. He'd seen her face.

* * *

Strax was out on a house call when she got back with the money. Jenny opened the safe they'd acquired from that last empty house, counting out what they had. Last night's job hadn't been worth the aggravation, although meeting her new friend was a nice perquisite, and he'd paid up more than enough for Strax's work. Little bonuses were everywhere, if you knew how to look. Filching extra from his friend wasn't nearly as good an investment as finding another contact who knew the Doctor.

Done with her counting, she took what she'd need for today's meals and stowed the rest. Given enough time, they'd set up a proper clinic with a doctor instead of a midnight surgery and constantly having to pay off the local constable on their beat.

She heard Strax stomping up the stairs. "You're back. Did he pay you?"

"With interest. His friend's an interesting one. A Captain." She didn't know why she blushed when she said the word, and aimed for pretending she hadn't.

"A proud seaman, is he?"

She parsed his words twice before she was certain of his meaning. "More of a pirate, I'd say. Be worth something to keep an eye on that one. We got anyone near there who owes us a favour?" And if they didn't, she'd make a point of keeping an eye on them herself.

* * *

Just as with finding Jack, a few inquiries went a long way. He dared not ask Jenny's aid yet, though that would have made the search much easier. Within a day, Ianto had identified a man named Parker as a likely candidate for the Silurian's human agent. His employer's name wasn't well-known, although her veiled face was. Ianto caught up with him at another dark pub, buying the man drinks with money borrowed from Jack.

"My lady doesn't like having her name around," he said between gulps of whisky. Whatever he'd seen earlier today, Parker was more than happy to dissolve the memory. Ianto'd found him seeking out the company of certain women of ill-repute. Whisky wasn't his only personal Retcon pill.

"I understand. Discretion is a virtue." Ianto nodded to the landlord, and put out more coins with an indication to keep the drink flowing. "I'd heard that your mistress might be looking for servants."

"Where would you be hearing that?" His question was sharper than Ianto had expected. He'd thought the man more drunk.

Carefully, he shrugged. "Around. They say she doesn't walk around in daylight on her own. You do for her."

"That I do."

"I'm in from Cardiff, you see. We have a peculiar, even extraordinary connexion to other worlds. It's called the Rift." He spoke quietly. "I've met travellers from other planets orbiting other suns."

Parker's eyes went wide. "What's in this glass?" he asked, pushing it aside. "I've never heard such madness." He went to stand. Ianto held up a hand, nudging him back into his stool.

"I've worked for masters and mistresses who weren't quite human, but they were humane, if you understand me. It's hard on a body who looks like a demon to do the work of an angel. I've been in service for years. I'd prefer offering my service to someone who needs me."

Parker watched him. He took a long drink of his whisky, and he didn't object to the top off. After a while, he said, "Madame Vastra has many enemies. Terrible and wicked folk, who stalk the streets and hurt the innocent. She stands up for them. Rescues them. She's a good woman, the best."

Ianto nodded eagerly. "Precisely the kind of person I want to meet."

Parker had a blade suddenly in his hand and against Ianto's neck, assaulting Ianto's nose with the strong scent of his soap. "So when some blighter comes asking questions about her, I get concerned. How do I know you're trustworthy?"

"Ianto!" bellowed a voice from the entrance to the pub. Strax marched in, a wide grin on his potato face. "I thought I'd find you here. Did you find your friend?"

"Yes, thank you," Ianto said. Thank God he'd been able to find Strax's practise when Jenny was out, and had arranged to meet him. The shock and admiration on Parker's face was well worth the risk. "I was just explaining to Mr. Parker here that I have been among non-humans before."

"Indeed," said Strax. "And better for the experience." He turned, his whole body going with him. "Ah, and there's Miss Jenny. As soon as I told her I was meeting you, she insisted on joining me."

"But you didn't arrive together," said Parker, as Jenny joined them at the bar completely at home. She'd done something with her hair, making pretty ringlets around her face, and she wore a hint of rouge.

"Fancy meeting you here," she said breathlessly to Ianto. He smiled back, and stood to offer her his seat.

"Nah, I'll sit here," she said, plopping herself on another stool. "New friend?" She stuck out her hand as Ianto tried to introduce Parker.

"Actually," he said, hitting on a grand idea. "Mr. Parker, perhaps you could introduce us all to Madame Vastra right now?" Two birds, one stone. It'd be perfect.

Parker didn't like the idea, face clouding as he took in Strax and Jenny. "I'm sorry, I've said too much as it is."

"Perhaps another time," Ianto said, hoping he didn't sound desperate.

"Perhaps." Parker made his farewells.

Ianto gave him ten breaths, then followed. Jenny was soon beside him. She whispered, "Who is he?"

"I need to meet his mistress." As did Jenny. Strax less so, but he too had come out into the street. "Let's follow him."

"Ah! A pursuit!"

Ianto grabbed his arm. "A quiet pursuit. Subterfuge." He placed his finger to his lips, hoping Strax would understand.

Jenny nodded helpfully. "We're being secret-like."

Together, the three of them watched Parker wander through the streets. They followed his steps, hanging back far enough to see his destination. Strax asked, "Are we going to disembowel him before or after the interrogation?"

"No disembowelling," said Jenny. "We talked about this."

"You're a nurse!" said Ianto, horrified.

"He's a good nurse. He's also a soldier. Keep up, yeah?" She moved ahead of them, scouting Parker's position. "He's looping back. I think he's headed to Paternoster Row."

The Paternoster Gang. Ianto glanced between them. They'd be famous one day, if only in Torchwood London's annals. Strax's stuffed body would gather dust in a warehouse. "Can you both work your way around from the other side? A pincer movement."

Strax nodded and immediately jogged away, hoping to cut off Parker. Jenny hung back. "Are you sure I shouldn't stay with you? It could be dangerous." For barely a second did he consider she was worried for her own sake.

"No, you'd best go with him and keep him from killing someone."

She sighed. "Right."

He watched her go, then hurried his steps. He wanted to reconnoitre on his own, although introducing the two women tonight would be high on his list of ideal moves. Parker staggered to a fine home, a bit shabby but exuding wealth. He slipped around the back. Servants' entrance, Ianto assumed, and he came closer.

Heavy curtains blocked all light from the imposing windows, yielding an impression of lamplight behind them. A quick look around found him one window where the drapery parted enough for a thin, yellow beam to wink out. He brought his eye closer, but could not see inside the house with such a narrow opening. He shouldn't tarry. Streetlights were few but present, and he risked being caught.

He made a note of the address and wandered down the street to where Strax and Jenny had just arrived. "Did you see him?" Ianto asked, before they could speak.

"No," Jenny said. "Did he get by you?"

"He must have. I'll try again tomorrow."

* * *

He made his way back to Jack's rented room with little trouble. London's streets hadn't changed their rambling routes so much by his day.

Jack was home when Ianto arrived, and he wasn't alone. His companion was pleasantly plump, pleasantly blonde, and pleasantly nude. She squeaked as Ianto came in, donning a light dress as rapidly as she could. Jack kept his blanket over himself, undisturbed and wearing his, "I need a post-coital nap" face. Ianto hadn't interrupted them in the middle, then.

"Sorry," he said to the young lady. "I should have knocked."

"Don't worry about it," Jack said. He sprawled back onto his bed. "On the table, if you please."

"Certainly." The woman placed some coins on the small table. "Same time next week, then?"

"Looking forward to it. Good night."

Before she walked out, she looked Ianto up and down. Jack said, loudly, "That's my cousin in from Cardiff." He didn't introduce them.

"Oh. He's pretty."

"He's spoken for. Good bye, Hazel." Jack waited until she'd closed the door. "Knocking's a good habit." He got out of the bed and collected the money into a small purse.

"Another bet?"

"A student. Sort of a friend, too."

Ianto sat down as Jack poured himself nearly clear water from a jug. "You always do have a way with people. What are you teaching her?"

"Sex. She wants to work in one of the high class houses, so I'm giving her some practise and advice."

Ianto's jaw snapped shut as the words trickled into his brain. The bed and the money on the table. "She's a prostitute and she's paying _you_?"

"She's looking for a higher paying clientèle and a better job. I'm not as picky, but I'm good at what I do."

"Which is?" He knew, though. He'd experienced Jack's skills first-hand many times. "Never mind. I thought you were a card sharp."

"I am. I'm also a pickpocket, a day-labourer, a hired gun, and when I'm in between those, I'll put the bite on anyone with enough push."

Ianto attempted to sort through that, and failed. "Oh."

Jack retrieved his trousers and examined them. Instead of pulling them on, he carefully laid them out over the edge of the table. "Does that bother you?"

"No." Yes, but he'd sort things over in his head on his own time. "I found the Silurian. Her name is Madame Vastra. I have her address, and I'm going to see about asking her for a job tomorrow."

"Obviously you had a good day's work, too. Tired?"

"Very." He'd barely slept last night, catching a short nap in the storage shed as Jack worked on the car. There wasn't much space in the room here, and all of it was taken up by the bed, the table, and the two little crates Jack used for chairs. Jack kept his clothes in a satchel under the bed, and his food in a bag hung outside the window.

As he watched, Jack lit a cigar from the candle.

"You smoke?"

He took a puff. "Sometimes? I don't worry about lung cancer."

"It just seems so... It isn't you." Jack had been the one to nag Ianto about the occasional cigarette he'd still had after joining Torchwood Three, until Ianto had quit for good right after Lisa's death.

"If it bothers you, I'll put it out, Mother." Jack crushed the end and carefully stowed it for later before he winked out the candle.

Ianto lifted one crate atop the other, creating floor space. "Do you have a blanket I could borrow?" A pillow would be too much to ask. He removed his clothes down to his vest and pants. He'd borrowed Jack's spare garments today; his own would need modification before they could pass as contemporary.

Jack sat on the bed again. With a gesture, he pointed out the space beside him, the sheets still rumpled and stained from his tumble with Hazel. His bed was larger than the camp bed back home, but perhaps that was a professional expense. "Plenty of room up here."

"The floor is fine, thank you."

"Then no. This _is_ the guest bed." He flopped back on the bed. He'd sleep for an hour or two, and he'd be fresh again. Ianto would steal the bed from him then, as he'd done countless times before. "I can behave myself, you know," Jack said.

"I know you can," said Ianto, uncomfortable on the hard floor and facing a growing worry of rats scurrying over him in the night. "I'm not so sure about myself. You are of course irresistible to all humanoid species."

Jack chuckled. "Of course." A few minutes passed, and his breath evened into sleep. Ianto listened to him, meanwhile straining his ears for rodent noises. No mice, no rats, just Jack in a rare moment, not yet knowing he'd have to see the entirety of the twentieth century pass before he found his heart's desire only to discover his heart wasn't there any longer.

Ianto loved him. He'd known for months how he felt, and he'd stopped denying the truth to himself. There was no need to tell his Jack, to risk scaring him away, or to risk being told his emotions weren't reciprocated. There was no point in telling _this_ Jack, who barely knew him and was only tolerating him because Ianto had invoked the Doctor's name. He'd watch this Jack, not warning him of the years stretching before him, the heartbreaks and the lost friends yet to be, and he would ache for the pain this Jack was going to endure. Compared to that, rats weren't much.

* * *

Morning found him stiff and still tired. Jack had gone out, but he'd left the last of the bread on the table. Ianto ate it, reluctantly washing down the taste with some brackish water from the jug. Jack had plenty of liquor on hand, but Ianto felt showing up drunk on Madame Vastra's doorstep would give the wrong impression. He donned Jack's borrowed clothes again, wishing for a bath and a shave, and tracked back to Paternoster Row.

Madame Vastra's home was as formidable and forbidding by day as it had been last night. He stamped his feet on the pavement, walking by several times as he cased the property. If he kept this up, she'd think him a robber. What he needed was an opening. Parker again? Or did he dare set up his own luck? He'd read through the pamphlet on alien invasions again. Apparently not only were the Lysans on their way, but a mysterious illness was worming through parts of London's population. Torchwood had later declared the outbreak an unknown alien threat, never caught.

That made things easier if he didn't have to catch the aliens. He could use the illness to attract her attention, get into her confidence, and introduce her to Jenny.

As he mentally worked over this plan, he went back to the tavern where he'd met Parker, asking more questions both of Parker's mysterious employer, and of any rumours of the illness. We've never met her, said the patrons. Typhoid, said the landlord, and he'd made pointed gestures at the glass Ianto had carefully nursed half the day. Now that he knew how Jack was earning his keep, he couldn't face wasting a single penny. Regretfully, he shoved the glass away and went back out into the streets, aiming once more for Vastra's door.

He didn't reach it.

For the second time in less than a day, Ianto felt cold steel against his throat. Just like the last time, he gave his best effort not to think about meat cleavers. An elegant, strangely accented voice said, "You've been curious about me. I ate the last man who asked too many questions about me." There went his attempt not to think about the cannibals.

Through lips pressed close to fight back sudden panic, he exhaled with care. "I'm sure his inquiries were quite rude. One shouldn't have to tolerate rudeness."

"Spying on a woman is considered very rude."

"Merely performing reconnaissance before making myself known. I should like to know for certain that my potential employers aren't going to kill me on sight."

The sword relaxed a fraction of an inch. "Do your employers often try to kill you, Mr. Jones?"

"My last boss threatened to shoot me once."

"Did you deserve it?"

He didn't have to hesitate. "Yes. I threatened his life the same night. We patched things up later. Are you going to kill me, or can we continue this conversation in a more pleasant environment?"

She lowered her sword. "I wasn't going to kill you."

"You did threaten to eat me."

At last he was face to face with the lizard queen of Paternoster Row, and he found his own observation reflected back at him, saw the flicker of her eyes to his clothes, his hands. Under her veil, she was a green-scaled beauty, not his type but certainly high on the list of attractive, lithe beings he'd expect Jack to bring home for an educational romp on the subject of comparative anatomy.

"I'm not the first person to threaten to eat you," she said. "You wear your clothes all wrong, and your accent is odd. You're Welsh but not from a Wales I've ever encountered. Very curious."

"And you're a lizard woman from the dawn of time," he countered. "I'd make an excellent butler, and I'm used to working with and for non-humans."

"I don't recall placing an advertisement in the paper."

"I've found my best positions are those I've created for myself." He noticed that they were both pacing slowly, circling each other like polite sharks. She could wipe the floor with him, sword or no sword. She also quite clearly saw through the lies of his appearance.

"What do you want from me?"

"I want to help you," he said.

Vastra frowned, peering at him. "You do, don't you?" She turned her back to him. He'd think it a sign of trust, or of foolishness, but something in his bones said that if he made the slightest move against her now, his head would be rolling on the cobblestones within seconds. Ianto stood perfectly still, even as she spun and brought the sword once again next to his throat.

"What if I tell you I'm not interested in hiring a butler?" Her breath was cool against his neck. He wondered fleetingly if Vastra's body would be warm or cool, and wondered too how it must feel to lie next to her stretched out. But if she would fall in love with Jenny, he almost certainly wasn't her type, either.

"Then I'll be disappointed, and I'll ask again tomorrow."

She made a nose in her throat, midway between an annoyed cough and a laugh. The sword disappeared, sheathed but not out of the conversation. "I'll pay you eighteen shillings a week. Serve me well, and your pay will rise."

"Serve you poorly and I'm lunch?"

"Tea. You start tonight."

* * *

"I'm in," he told Jack when they met at the storage shed. "I've got a plan. There's some kind of sickness going around that Torchwood thought was alien. I'll have her help me investigate, bring Jenny in, and hopefully, they'll strike it off."

Jack's back was to him, body halfway under the bonnet of the car. "Not a bad plan. How are you going to keep yourself and the others from getting sick?"

He hadn't considered. "We'll have a nurse with us."

"A Sontaran nurse. Are you sure this isn't the first stage of a Sontaran stealth invasion? He comes to Earth posing as a nurse, infects the population to ready them for an attack, easy peasy." All this was muffled by the car. Jack had refitted the starter for the new energy source, but trying to revamp the internal combustion engine for lamp oil wasn't going so easily. He swore he could do it, but Ianto had begun to worry.

"I'm sure that's not the case. Sontarans aren't known for their subtlety." Martha had told them about the Sontaran involvement with the burning sky incident, so this was not altogether true. However, the concept of Strax as a secret agent was laughable enough to be uncomfortably plausible. "Besides, he claims to be a friend of the Doctor."

"Could be. Let me know if you want help. I'm pretty resilient when it comes to disease."

Ianto paused. This Jack hadn't necessarily made the important connections indicating the complexity of his condition. "You mean you can't die."

The *CLANG* of Jack's head hitting the bonnet as he rose up was loud enough for Ianto to wince in sympathy. He bent around the side to look at Ianto, and none too casually, said, "Pardon?"

"You've been stuck here fifteen years. Surely you've noticed your astonishingly good health." He oughtn't have mentioned. Jack had said something about not figuring out his condition for some time. He covered, "You don't get sick from your clients, for example."

"I thought I was just lucky." Jack swallowed, expression lost again. "Did I tell you how I got here?"

"You tried to follow the Doctor and Rose after they left the Game Station." He didn't point out that they'd abandoned Jack, not even leaving him for dead as Jack had told himself. The Doctor had known he was fine. This Jack still believed he'd been left behind by accident. He thought they missed him, and wanted him back, not that they'd gone off on holiday and left him to revive amongst the dead because the Doctor could no longer stand the sight of him.

"I woke up. I thought I'd been killed." He didn't mention the word 'Daleks' but Jack had always been reasonably good at concealing specific knowledge of the future. "I've been hoping to find them ever since. I need to show them I'm okay." He stared at Ianto. "You said I will."

"Yes." He'd find them, and he'd find out he'd been brushed off by the two people he thought had loved him most.

"Good." He went back to work, face conveniently hidden from where Ianto could read his mood. "Like I said, let me know if you want help."

* * *

tbc


	4. Chapter 4

His position as Madame Vastra's butler and general manservant started that evening. Parker greeted him with less than enthusiastic cordiality. He showed Ianto the servants' entrance, gave him access to the wardrobe that held a few musty, mismatched uniforms, and otherwise stood aloof, his freshly-washed hair slicked back.

"I don't mean to step on anyone's toes," Ianto told him as he donned a more appropriate suit for his station. "This wasn't your job, was it?"

"No. I've been Madame's driver and handyman. I wouldn't know which spoon to use to eat an eyeball if you asked."

Eyeball? "I'm familiar with the normal etiquette guides."

"Things are hardly normal here. She ate the last butler, and we haven't kept a maid on for more than a week. Speaking of which, you're also the cook now. I'll have my supper cold from the pantry, but she'll want feeding."

Parker left him to stare about himself in the disturbingly unused kitchen. Ianto opened drawers and doors until he located the cold pantry. He found hard cheese, preserved meats and jams, and a few lonely vegetables. Searching turned up an old loaf of bread in a box which seemed passable once he scraped down the crust. With a knife that could use sharpening, he put together a passable cold plate suitable for noshing whilst going over midnight data scans yet again. His employer would probably not be thrilled but tomorrow he could run out to buy supplies, and ask for lessons on operating the hob.

Vastra kept a hothouse not dissimilar to the one they had at the Hub. The air was redolent with warm, green fragrance from fronds and ferns. As he brought the tray of nibbles, Ianto noted the plants he recognised and made a mental note to find out if their care was under his purview.

"Apologies for the small selection, ma'am. I'd like to visit the butcher's tomorrow. A bakery as well."

Madame Vastra indicated the table beside her. "You may. Parker will give you money."

So dismissed, Ianto left her side and gave himself a tour of the house. Most rooms appeared unused, the fine furniture covered with dust cloths, the cloths themselves dusty and forgotten. He discovered the small suite of rooms she lived in upstairs. Should he tidy? Was there a maid? Had she eaten the maid?

He considered this was not his most well-researched plan. He'd had a crash course in becoming Torchwood's handyman and Jack's occasional valet with great credit due to Google. He had hoped this wouldn't be much different, but as he stared at the fireplace, the tinderbox and what he could only hope was a warming pan, he knew he was far out of his depth. Eventually, Vastra rang for him to take away the tray as she read by lamplight in the humid room. He washed what he could, and fed himself from the remains of the cold pantry. Tomorrow would be a shopping day, and more practise with a monetary system he only knew from his dad's occasional complaints. If he was lucky, he'd put the rest of his plan into motion, too.

Ianto searched until he found the room Parker had shown him earlier with the uniform. He bed was almost as dusty as the beds upstairs, and he was certain something small and whiskery had taken up residence in the mattress since the last owner's departure. Nevertheless, he made himself a place to settle amongst the tired sheets, and was as grateful as he could be for the small comfort.

As sleep beckoned, he thought about Jack, which made him wonder if this Jack was working tonight. Jack had hated working for Torchwood in the beginning, Ianto remembered, yet looking at his life before it, he'd had good reason to stay on. A clean bed with the only other inhabitants his invited guests? That had to be heaven.

* * *

Morning found him at the butcher's shop where Vastra generally bought her meat. A few questions pointed him towards a baker with fresh wares, and a greengrocer's. Ianto paid for his purchases to be delivered later in the day, making his way into the poorer areas of the city. He was looking for disease, and he found it soon enough.

A makeshift infirmary stood on Molly Street, with patients and soon-to-be-patients loitering outside. Ianto saw boils and strange growths that he chose not to get too close to. Was it just another London disease, or had Torchwood's records been correct in identifying this as alien?

Within the infirmary, an elderly man who went by the moniker Doctor Brown treated everyone who came through the doorway. Ianto caught sight of two nurses and a much-harried assistant who looked far too young to be working. As Ianto wasn't ill, everyone ignored him or pushed past him. He asked questions of the sick people out in the streets, wishing he had hand sanitiser wipes with him. He caught the assistant running out on an errand.

"Please. What's going on?"

The youth, who might have been fifteen in a good light and a pair of tall shoes, gave him an impatient glance full of meaning. Ianto knew it well, having been the one to show that same expression to tourists dropping by the Information Centre just as he was closing up to go save the world from aliens. Feeling like a heel but hoping this was for the best, he handed the boy two shillings. The countenance didn't change, but he paused. "I'm fetching the iodine."

"What's made these people ill?"

He shrugged. "No-one knows. Some sailor came home to visit his mum, the next day half the street is coming down with it. Doc Brown thinks we ought to quarantine all of Molly Street to be safe."

"Do you?"

"I'm no doctor." A knavish smile flashed and was gone, and it whispered the word, 'Yet.'

Ianto played to his ego. "But you're a smart lad. You know a lot." This worked. The youth visibly brightened. Ianto reckoned many people took in his tender age and his dark complexion, and they instantly dismissed his intelligence. People did that in Ianto's time, too.

"If you ask me, all these people took ill without ever seeing that man. I think it's in the air, and that means we're not quarantining anything. Can't stop the air."

"Do you think something from outside might be poisoning them?" This could be his big break.

"No. I think the sailor was sick, right? And as soon as he sneezed, the whole street caught ill."

Not what Ianto had been hoping to hear. "Have you told Doctor Brown that?"

"Like I said, he doesn't listen to me." The youth took his money and headed away from Ianto. He still had his task to finish.

Mysterious illness. It would have to do.

* * *

"It's been spreading like plague in the poor districts."

Vastra tilted her head, unblinking stare penetrating through him. She was from the age of the dinosaurs. He knew exactly how his mammalian ancestors must have felt meeting that gaze. "While they have my sympathies, I don't see how another bout of typhoid is something I can change."

"It isn't typhoid," he said. "The disease could be alien in nature. I think it's worth an investigation."

"Even if you are correct, how on Earth do you think I will help? I am a warrior, not a doctor."

He straightened up. "If it's alien, someone is planting the infection and must be stopped. I have a friend who is familiar with alien disease and can help with the rest. Please, Madame."

She lifted her teacup to her mouth and did not reply. Vastra was not a woman to be rushed into anything. She drank her tea, a hint of inhuman tongue licking out at the end to take up the last drop. When she settled back into her chair, she faced him. "This is why you came to me asking for work."

"I'm sorry?"

"How did you know of the disease?"

"I heard about it."

"From whom?"

"From the young doctor who is risking his life to treat them." He held her gaze.

"I see you are going to insist on bothering me about things you want, Mr. Jones. Explain to me why it isn't going to be easier for me in the long run to eat you now."

He considered this. Her expression was nigh unreadable. He'd grown accustomed to sussing out Jack's moods, complex storms enriched with such a long past. Madame Vastra was even older, but he could only guess her thoughts. He went for broke. "Because you find me an entertaining puzzle to solve, and I have just brought you something new."

She muttered something. "Very well. Bring my veil. The black one. And have Parker ready the coach."

"Thank you, Madame."

* * *

He'd sent a message to Jenny and Strax via two pence given to a small boy he'd found outside. Part of him wondered if he was irreparably altering the timeline by changing the financial balance in the city every time he paid for something. He couldn't worry about that now. He saved his worries for all his other problems.

Jenny and Strax arrived just as Vastra's coach pulled to the kerb, depositing Vastra and Ianto before Parker drove away. Jenny, out of breath from running, smiled through her panting as soon as she saw him. "Ianto!"

"Thank you for coming. Madame Vastra, these are my friends. Mr. Strax is a nurse. He saved my life. And this is my dear friend Jenny Flint."

He held his breath as he introduced them, hoping he'd see sparks. Instead, Vastra inclined her head to them both with a perfunctory, "Charmed, I'm sure," and Jenny barely acknowledged her as she turned back to Ianto.

"What's going on?"

"There's plague running through Molly Street."

Strax said, "Hardly plague. When you humans stop building your middens next to your wells, you will overpopulate your puny world." He took in Ianto and Jenny's matching offended expressions and added, "With respect."

Vastra inspected Strax more closely. "You aren't one of the apes, are you?"

"Strax is a Sontaran," said Ianto. Neither of the others appeared to notice Vastra's odd mien. He wondered if there was a perception filter woven into her lacy black veil, making her visible only to those who already knew her secret. "Perhaps things would be easier if you showed your face."

"Perhaps I should remind you who is in command here." She strode towards the entrance to the alley that led to Molly Street. A policeman barred her way, with long wooden poles crossing the entrance. "Gendarme, let me pass."

"Begging your pardon, ma'am, but we can't. This whole area is sealed off. Deadly plague. No one is allowed in or out."

Ianto said, "We are medical workers. Doctors and nurses." Jenny and Strax came up beside him.

"Sorry, Doctor, but the orders come from the highest authority."

Vastra reached under her cloak as Jenny changed her pose to something that promised bodily harm. They could easily take down this silly copper and any mates he had. Ianto spied movement in a close alley. The shadow moved and he caught a face.

"Madame," he said loudly, placing a hand on her arm. The glance she shot him pierced through her veil and promised he'd be losing that hand if he didn't remove it immediately. "This poor man is only doing as he was told. We'll return later."

"I don't think so," said Jenny. "I can make short work of him."

Ianto changed his attentions to her. "But you don't have to yet." He took her elbow, tugging her away and hoping Strax didn't decide now was a good time to begin wiping out Earth authorities.

With complaints from the others, he led them to the alley where he'd seen the shadow.

Jack waited there impatiently. "Come on."

"What are you doing here?"

"You didn't come home last night."

"I told you I was starting my new job."

Vastra coughed delicately. Ianto said, "Sorry. Madame Vastra, this is my friend."

"Captain Jack Harkness," he said cheekily, taking her gloved hand and kissing it. "I haven't seen a Silurian in years."

"You're familiar with my people?" Finally, she removed the veil, to a quiet gasp of surprise from Jenny and a grab for a weapon from Strax, which Jenny halted with a nearly automatic grasp of his fat wrist.

"I was, a long time ago. I gotta say, you're exactly as beautiful as I remember." This coloured Vastra's scales a darker green.

It was Ianto's turn to clear his throat. "Did you come here to flirt with my employer?"

"No, I came here because I think I know what the plague is. I think I've seen it before, and I think I can get us inside the quarantine zone." Jack looked pleased with himself.

As they followed him to the empty building that backed onto another part of Molly Street, Ianto whispered, "How could you have seen it?"

"I looked over that pamphlet again. I did some investigating on my own."

A suspicion dawned. "I didn't give you the pamphlet."

"It fell out of your pocket." Jack's face was utterly bland at the bald lie. Ianto let it go.

He glanced back, hoping to see the others making friends. No luck. "What is it?"

"I want to get inside to make sure." As they climbed the ruined stairs, Jack paused. "I think Ianto and Jenny ought to stay here. If I'm right, this is exclusively transmissible to humans."

Jenny moved past him, and reached the window exit that was their access point. "And if you're wrong, you'll need our help."

The situation had worsened. People lay where they'd fallen. Strax examined the first bodies he found. "They live, but I have not seen such a disease before." He muttered something about harnessing its power for the glory of the Sontaran Empire, but Jenny cleared her throat and he said simply, "I will see what I can do."

"We'll try the infirmary," said Ianto. The hospital ward burgeoned with the sick and the comatose. Doctor Brown lay in one of the beds, skin bursting with boils. The nurses were nowhere to be seen. Ianto's friend from earlier appeared to be the only one left on his feet, but even he had the beginnings of boils on the backs of his dark hands.

"Oh, it's you," he said, when he saw Ianto. The phrase wasn't relieved, or happy. It was simple acknowledgement of another human he'd seen before, who was likely bringing him more work to do.

"I brought friends."

"Can they change chamberpots?"

Strax came in. "Girl, where are your documents?"

The youth's eyebrows went up. Ianto said hurriedly, "Mr. Strax is a nurse."

"He's foreign," said Jenny quickly.

Jack and Ianto both turned to her. "Foreign?" Jack asked, in a clear tone of, 'And people believe you?'

"Right," said the boy, who clearly didn't. "I have some notes. The antifungals seem to work, but barely." Jack and Strax browsed the jotted notes.

"This is what I was afraid of," Jack said. "I've seen this on three planets. The fungus takes hold and gives the infected the urge to spread it. The next thing you know, the whole population has it."

Strax muttered to himself more. "I need room to work."

The youth turned to Ianto. "Is he any good?"

"I hope." He noticed Jack smiling at the boy, and said, "These are my friends. This is Jack, and Jenny. My employer, Madame Vastra." Vastra stood at the edge of the room. She clearly had been expecting battle. Simple sickness unnerved her. "Jenny, could you and Vastra check the perimeter? For security?"

"I thought I'd stay here with you and help."

Jack said, "Security is the bigger worry. If you could. Thanks a lot." He shushed her outside. Vastra would not be moved, but went under her own power, clearly grateful to be outside. "There. Standing guard at a hospital. Better than Spanish Fly."

"Really?"

"No." He turned to the young doctor-in-training, who was treating Doctor Brown. "Sorry, didn't get your name."

"Ignatius." He dabbed iodine onto the open sores as Brown cursed and pulled away. "That'll be Doctor Oshodi one day."

Ianto blinked. But of course he was. Doctor Brown said, "Hah. A coloured doctor? You continue to dream."

"He will be a doctor one day," said Ianto. Jack glanced at him, then smacked him lightly on the head.

"Spoilers."

"Sorry."

"You are rubbish at this."

"I know."

* * *

Strax cured the plague an hour later, thanks to future Doctor Oshodi's notes. Within three hours, enough of the patients in the infirmary had received the cure to walk on their own power. Jack took Ianto's arm. "We should go. They've got this."

Ianto tried to see if Jenny and Vastra had talked, if they were showing signs of perhaps enjoying each other's company, if anything at all. But as soon as Jenny saw Ianto again, her face broke into a grin, and she took his arm. "There you are." Should she even have noticed Jack still held the other, she didn't let on.

Vastra sent Ianto ahead to fetch Parker, making him disengage with both. Of course he had to work, and couldn't go off with Jack and the others. As Madame Vastra entered her coach, she said loudly enough for them to hear, "And now, Mr. Jones, we will talk about your wasting my time."

She gave him the cold shoulder for the rest of the day, though not the sack. When he finally edged out into her presence again with supper, he found his employer by one of the windows, with the curtain just ajar. "It's beef, ma'am. Rare, as you said, with roasted vegetables." Rare meant that it was supposed to be underdone. He had located no herbs anywhere in the pantry or the markets, so he'd done what he could with black pepper.

"Leave it on the table. Please feel free not to tell me it's been set there by aliens."

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am." He remained standing.

She let out an exasperated sigh. "What now? Clockwork Cybermen in the scullery?"

"You know about the Cybermen?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I do. But you shouldn't. There was a timeline shift erasing them from memory. I suppose travelling through time does that to you."

"You're a time traveller?"

"Well-met. I travelled the fashionable way. I slept. How did you arrive?"

"Sorry, ma'am, what?"

"I tested you earlier today. I was humming a song I enjoy. You hummed along."

He thought back. "I did?"

With a rather pleasant voice, more so than he'd have thought, she sang quietly, "Pretty little maids from school are we."

"Oh that." He shrugged. "Picked it up somewhere, I suppose." That somewhere would be Jack and Lisa's interest in Gilbert and Sullivan. Ianto had been unimpressed with either's attempt to entrance him in the operettas, but he'd learned a little nonetheless.

"It's from _The Mikado_."

"Yes. I went to see that last season." As soon as he spoke, he felt the trap, and was floored by his own stupidity. Lies came easy to him, always had, but the lies had to be credible, and never to someone who could tell.

"A pity that show opens next week. One of the actors owed me a favour, and I listened in on an early rehearsal. But you did not. And you know of the Cybermen, and aliens, and you keep friends with non-humans. How far in the future have you travelled, Mr. Jones?"

"I've never travelled into the future," he said, scuttling back to honesty.

She smiled. He wasn't sure if this was a quiet, triumphant smile, or the smile of someone who's decided on a much better dish than rare beef with veg. "What year were you born?"

"Ma'am?"

"You have not lost your hearing in the last minute. Tell me the year you were born."

There was no room to run. She'd find him. She would make him speak. "1983."

"I see. Tell me, do you enjoy playing games with foolish people from the past, or have you simply come to destroy us?" He heard the anger banked in her tone.

The truth was not his friend, but it was his sole lifeline here in this room. "I'm here by accident. I'd like to get home."

"Are your friends also time travellers?"

"Not Jenny, but the other two are. They didn't arrive here with me. They're staying in 1885 until it turns to 1886, or a blue police box shows up on their doorstep."

His little joke was ruined as Vastra brightened up. "Oh, they know the Doctor?"

* * *

tbc


	5. Chapter 5

"You are _completely_ rubbish at this," Jack said for the fifth time.

"I know!" Ianto buried his face in his hands at the little table. Vastra had sent him home for the evening, and told him to bring his friends round in the morning. She'd seemed excited at the prospect of chatting with more of the Doctor's associates.

"The first rule of time travel is not to let on that you're a time traveller. You've told everyone you've met!"

"Not true. I didn't tell Parker."

"Oh good," Jack said, sarcasm dripping. "At least Parker doesn't know. Who's Parker?"

"Her driver."

"Rubbish."

Ianto banged his head down again. "She wants you and Strax around for breakfast tomorrow."

"This is good."

"She didn't invite Jenny. She didn't want to see Jenny again. She doesn't dislike her. She simply doesn't care because Jenny didn't travel with the Doctor."

"Yeah. Good question why, too. She's his type: young, cute, not so bright." Jack smiled in memory, and Ianto did not point out the obvious.

"I need to set them up, or I have no future to go back to." He'd checked his mobile again, although the battery was beginning to fade. Owen was gone from the photograph. Tosh was starting to disappear. All his photos of Lisa had vanished from the phone's memory, God alone knew why.

"Then let's try another plan. What would make the two of them notice each other, since the not at all alien plague didn't work."

Ianto thought about it. "Jenny likes me because I saved her life. If Vastra saves her life, maybe she'll fall for her instead."

"Risky but plausible. The Lysans are attacking in two days. Send the team out during the attack, arrange for Jenny to be threatened, Vastra rushes in and rescues her, violins play, hearts and flowers. Why do these two have to hook up again?"

Ianto didn't answer. "I'm not fond of the idea of endangering Jenny for the sake of this. What if she's injured or killed?" He had a selfish reason behind his concern, because her death meant he surely wasn't getting home, but he really did like her as well. "There has to be a better way."

"You already said no to getting them both drunk and putting them in bed together."

"And I'm saying no to that again."

"You won't let me seduce them both."

"Also a no."

"And you're not going to seduce them both."

"God, no."

Jack snapped his fingers, as though he'd had a brilliant idea. "You could play Cyrano. Write them each love letters to get them to fall for the stroke of a pen."

"I'm not a poet, and neither are you."

Indeed, Jack had written him precisely one romantic poem for Valentine's Day. The others had long been gone to their various assignations. Ianto hadn't figured a way even to ask Jack if he had plans when he'd found the first line written in dry-erase marker on the minifridge in the butler's pantry: "Roses are red." An arrow pointed to the stairs. The Post-It note stuck to the stairs had read: "Violets are blue." Another arrow led him to Tosh's station and a note. "I don't like poems." The fourth line was on Gwen's desk. "And neither do you." The fifth was on the cogwheel: "Coffee is brown." Ianto had laughed out loud at that, and followed the next clue to the door of Jack's office. "I think you like ducks." Inside the office, there had been an arrow pointing down to the open cover of Jack's bunker. There'd been another note. "Please climb down." There had been no eighth note, merely a Captain Jack stretched out and smirking, with the only stitch of clothing on his body the red satin ribbon he'd thoughtfully wrapped around himself.

"No poetry."

"Have you considered setting them up on a blind date? Inviting them to the same party? I don't really know what you're looking for, here. I don't do relationships."

"I know," Ianto said, perhaps more sharply than he should have. "As I said, we've met. You're quite consistent."

If Jack noticed his annoyance, he didn't acknowledge it. Instead, he scratched his chin in thought. "The party idea isn't bad. We're headed to hers for breakfast with Strax anyway, so let's bring Jenny and introduce them again."

"I can't just invite random guests."

"No lady of manners would say no if you brought your sweetheart."

An image of the little red bow entered his mind again. Ianto had untied his present with his teeth. "Jenny is not my sweetheart."

"She doesn't know that. Invite her as your companion. Work that for a day or so until the Lysan invasion, and when there's an opportunity, play the coward and let Vastra rescue her instead."

"This will never work."

"It'll have to." Jack picked up his hat and dusted the brim. "I'll see you in the morning."

"I thought you were in for the night."

"Not tonight. I have a regular client who has me over on Thursday nights." That would explain the bath he'd taken earlier. He'd offered Ianto the still-warm bathwater when he'd finished, and Ianto had reluctantly accepted both the water and Jack's impenitent stares. He'd even said yes to a quick lesson with Jack's straight-razor, something he'd been terrified to try back home as much as his Jack had wheedled. Jack had purred and licked and promised that he'd made every sharp stroke a much deeper pleasure than they'd managed with the plastic safety razor. Ianto's experiences under Jack's gentle touch using the cheap disposable had been intense enough, with Jack's rough, warm tongue soothing every centimetre of skin he exposed.

But instead of making a pass at him, this Jack was going to work.

"Do you have to?"

Jack let out a noise between an annoyed groan and a sigh. "You may be going home in a few days, but I have to eat next week. Besides, this one isn't bad. He tells his servants I'm instructing him how to box. His wife watches us. Sometimes I have permission to go down on her while he's doing me. Nice couple. They usually ask me to sleep over and go for more in the morning, but I'll join you for breakfast at Madame Vastra's."

And with that, he was gone.

* * *

Breakfast went both better and worse than he'd expected. Ianto did still have his position, which meant he was still the cook. Jack and Strax kept company with Madame Vastra in the humid hothouse where she spent much of her time during the chilly March days. He'd made hints to Jenny to stay with them, but nothing could stop her from following him back into the kitchen.

"Honestly," Ianto said, "I can do this." Another lie. He'd convinced Parker to light the stove for him last night. He couldn't so much as get a strike until Jenny set aside her hat and gloves, found an apron, and lit the great iron oven like a professional.

"There. I was in service for a while. Easy enough to get back into." After that, she took over, nice as you please, sending him to fetch eggs and flour and salt and tea as she needed them. He hid his revulsion as she put large gobs of lard onto the pan to fry, but the mouth-watering smell brought him round again. Together they sorted out the coffee screw, filling the whole house with a gorgeous aroma.

He took a small cup, just to sample the quality, honestly, and the headache he'd been fighting for days smoothed out. "Thank you for your help."

She raised her eyebrows knowingly, and he laughed. "Well enough," he added. "Thank you for allowing me to help."

Jenny gave a half-curtsey. "I could get used to being around a kitchen again." She could, he thought. Jenny efficiently cooked a nice breakfast for everyone in much less time than it would have taken Ianto even to get the pan hot. "You don't cook much, do you?"

"Jack does most of the cooking. I'm better at fetching orders from the restaurant."

If she noticed his slip, she didn't say, and he supposed it wasn't much of a slip. Jack here was his friend.

She did take off her apron before she slipped back into the room with the others, allowing him to serve the meal as was supposed to be his job. Madame had set out a decanter, and Jack had a glass of a golden-brown beverage in front of him. Ianto deftly moved his glass and replaced it with a coffee cup.

"I was drinking that."

"Were you?" He refused to hand the glass back.

When the food and drink was served, he went to stand aside. Madame Vastra rolled her eyes. "Sit down, Mr. Jones. We are all part of this."

He sat at the small table he'd dragged in, pressed between Jenny and Jack. He'd arranged for Jenny to sit next to Madame Vastra, but rapidly lost hope as the meal and conversation progressed. Vastra was fascinated with Strax, and to a lesser extent, Jack. She also asked Ianto questions about his past, whatever he could answer without damaging the timeline.

"And you've met the Doctor," Madame said to him, over her third cup of over sweet tea. She might look like a Jurassic Park nightmare, but she drank her tea exactly like Ianto's Gran.

"Not in person. We worked together." He didn't look at Jack although he felt Jack's interested stare on the side of his face. "When Darth Vader invaded from the Planet Vulcan. Jenny, you've met the Doctor, haven't you?"

"Oh yes." She launched into her tale, shooting back and forth with Strax over details. At last, she had Vastra's attention. Ianto asked questions every time the story seemed to head to a close, drawing her out. Jack, alas, was just as fascinated by her story. Ianto nudged him under the table. Jack nudged him right back. Ianto stepped on his foot, and was rejoined by a hand in his lap.

This was not the first time he'd sat at a table with Jack whilst interesting things happened below the tablecloth. Unfortunately, he couldn't let himself enjoy this time, and pulled Jack's hand away.

"Are you all right?" Jenny asked him, as he bumped her on accident.

"I'm fine." He smiled. "If you'll excuse me, I'll take the plates." He stood, collecting the dishes quickly.

Jenny stood. "I'll help."

"No, you ought to tell Madame more about that badger alien."

"I'll help," Jack said, and collected the rest of the dishes himself. Together, they took everything to the kitchen. Ianto heated a basin of water. Jack lounged against the wall, watching him.

"I ought to go back and distract Strax," he drawled, "but I have to admit, you're cute bent over a pile of washing-up."

"Your kinks continue to plumb the depths of the banal and the strange." He plunged the dishes into the water with a bar of soap, and set about scrubbing. He ought to soak the pans.

He was surprised, and perhaps oughtn't have been, to feel Jack's warm body pressed up against his back, and his hands resting with the gentlest pressure on each hip. "And how," he breathed in Ianto's ear, "would you know so much about my kinks?"

Ianto dropped a plate into the basin.

"I know you in the future. I told you that."

Warm breath kissed his ear. "How well?"

He could turn. From this position, he could turn around, be pressed just that much over by Jack's imposing presence. No matter what he answered, they'd kiss. Jack liked kissing, liked pattering the softest rain of kisses against Ianto's mouth, and down his neck, liked meeting his closed lips and touching the sensitive skin of his ears until Ianto opened his mouth with a moan. Ianto knew all his moves, all his tells, could surprise and delight this Jack with his knowledge of what Jack enjoyed.

They would kiss, and they would half-wrestle until they were in the alcove of the scullery. Then it didn't matter whether it was Jack on his knees on the cold flagstones, or Ianto bent over with his flies open and a warm hand stroking him off. Hell, more than once back home, they hadn't even undressed, just kissed and rubbed against one another until their trousers were spoiled and messy. They could stand like that here, now, come undone without ever undoing a button and worry about covering themselves later, if Ianto but turned around.

He stayed where he was. "I know you well enough. Down, boy. I can't afford you."

It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Jack tensed instantly, backing away. Ianto did turn then, and saw the hurt before Jack covered it.

"I'm sorry," he said as fast as he could. "I didn't mean that."

"You did. But fine. You're right. We're working a job here. No time for distractions. I'll ask Strax to help me work on the car. You convince Jenny to stay."

"Jack, wait." But Jack was gone, and Ianto was not about to chase him. If he did, he'd tell this Jack everything. He knew he was rubbish at time travel. There was no point in making the situation worse.

* * *

Rather than chatting with Madame Vastra, Jenny continued haunting Ianto through his chores. She'd clearly done these same tasks before, and had no qualms telling him how to dust and press and fold. "No offence, but you aren't very good at being a butler," she chided, when he stared at the steam iron with no idea how to operate it.

"So I've been told. You really don't need to be helping. You could be telling Madame more about your adventures."

"Nonsense. You'd waste away without me."

"I would. You've cleaned most of the house today." He tried another go in the next room. "What do you think about her?"

"Who?"

"Madame."

"Oh her." Her face screwed up in thought. "Seems nice enough."

He pressed. "Do you like her?"

"Yes? Why? Is she looking to bring on more staff?" Her face changed. "I could work here with you. Be nice, honest work for an honest woman, yeah?"

"She might," he hedged. "Do you think she's beautiful?"

"She's a lizard." Jenny placed her hand over her mouth, and glanced around to make sure Madame wasn't listening. "Well, there's none of us can help how we're made. I'm sure she's very attractive for her species."

"But you don't perhaps find her very striking?"

"Striking?" She blinked, and her face grew disappointed. "Ianto, she's a high lady, whatever she looks like. You're a servant. It's best not to get ideas." She was colder to him now, as she swept out the last fire grating.

"Madame isn't my type." None of this was working. But perhaps as with Madame, the truth would work better with Jenny. "Can I trust you?"

She looked at him. "No. You can't trust anyone, not and be safe." He stared, and she relented. "Go on, then."

"Jack's my type. In the future, in my time, we're together. But this Jack doesn't know that, so please don't tell him."

Her eyes went big, and she stepped back from him. Then she nodded. "Sorry. I'm sorry," she said, colour flushing her cheeks. "I never should have... It's fine."

"I do like you," he said, taking her hand so that she wouldn't run. "You're a good friend, and an excellent maid. You'd be much better in this position than I am. As you said, I'm awful. I'm from a future where everything is on the electric. I do most of my cooking in an electric box that heats a meal in four minutes."

She smiled shyly. "You're pulling my leg."

"Nope. Horseless carriages, flying ships, images broadcast from across the world in seconds, it's all coming."

"It sounds wonderful."

"It can be. Sometimes terrible, too," he said, thinking about the cold technology of Torchwood London and the chill of Lisa's metal limbs. "It's certainly interesting." In the ancient curse fashion, he mentally added. He'd been interested in the patterns of the burning machinery, and the pictures made by bloodstained concrete.

"Could I come with you when you go back?"

"What?" He snapped out of his reverie, lost in the sound of the machines that had kept his lover alive too long. "No, I don't think that's a good idea."

"But it'd be grand. Strax has told me all about his future. I want to see the same things." Her eyes sparkled with delight at the prospect of new adventures, whatever disappointment Ianto had given her overshadowed with anticipation. Had she only ever been interested in him as another adventure?

"Speaking of, I should really see how he and Jack are getting on with my time machine."

"You'd best make sure they haven't taken it."

"What do you mean?"

"Your friend is a time-traveller, yeah? So's Strax. Either of them would kill for a working time carriage."

* * *

Given Jenny's youth and Madame's generous if cold heart, she instructed Parker to drive her home and drop Ianto off at his.

"I'll expect you in the morning," she told him. "Although I'm wondering if hiring your charming companion wouldn't be better worth the price."

"She might be, ma'am. Good evening to you."

Jenny was deposited safely at her doorstep. Now freed of worrying that she might drive Ianto off, she gave him a sweet peck on the cheek before she disembarked.

"Charming girl," Parker said, when Ianto climbed to the top with him.

"She is. I'm hoping Madame brings her on as a maid." Having planted that seed, he asked Parker to drop him off near the shed.

Jenny's half-joke worried at him as he let himself inside the darkened workshop. Perhaps they'd finished. This was too dark, too quiet, too empty.

Ianto stared at the place where the time car had been stored. Had Jack and Strax together made it work without the Lysans' beam? His heart sunk. Given the chance to dash ahead in time, even his Jack had run off at the first sounds of the TARDIS engines. Did Strax honestly have a better reason to stay here, in the land of syphilis and measles?

They'd gone. Of course they'd gone. Knowing Jack's wide tastes, he may have even given Strax a freebie as a thank you.

"Fuck."

* * *

tbc


	6. Chapter 6

The car was gone. "Fuck."

The word echoed in the small space.

"Watch your language," said Jack, coming from behind the bench and wiping his hands. "You swear too much."

"You're here!" He couldn't keep the shock off his face and didn't try.

"Yeah?"

"But the car's gone."

"Right. The Lysans will be here in two days. Strax and I hid it into a better location. It's ready to drive."

"Oh."

Jack came closer. "You thought I took the car?"

"I thought you both had," he confessed. "It's a time machine. I didn't think you could resist."

"I couldn't."

"What?"

"I couldn't resist. But Strax reminded me that the Doctor would kill me if I screwed up time just to find him again." He smiled, with more than a little pain. Ianto went to his side on autopilot and took his arm. "That's why I let him drive the car to the location while I burned those boxes of papers from the boot."

That was one relief. "Are you sure he hasn't stolen it?"

Jack frowned. "You don't think... Nah, he wouldn't." He noticed Ianto's hand on his arm and pulled away. "Shouldn't you be at work?"

"Madame sent me home. And I wanted to apologise for earlier. I made a cheap joke, and you didn't deserve that."

"Thanks." They stared awkwardly at each other for a moment. Jack said, "I don't know what to make of you. You say we know each other, that you know me. Fine, you're not the first person I've met out of order. There was this one archaeologist from the fifty-second century that I met for the first time so often we started keeping notes."

Ianto smiled. "You told me about her once. I remembered because it was the only story of yours that didn't involve your being naked."

"Hey, I do some of my best work naked."

"I know."

Jack didn't say anything. Instead, he drew Ianto in for a sudden kiss, his breath still as sweet as the last time he'd kissed Ianto good night. By instinct, Ianto leaned into him, nuzzling a soft place on Jack's cheek as he responded. This was a terrible idea. Jack's hand pressed against the back of Ianto's head, holding him lightly in place. They had to stop now. His own hands met at the cravat at Jack's neck, working the knot loose. Timelines. Jack kissed him harder, his lips nibbling and insisting for more contact. Possibly prison. Ianto got the knot free, to slide his hand down Jack's shirt, touching smooth skin.

Jack stroked the edge of Ianto's teeth with his tongue, and he broke the kiss. "Answers that question."

Ianto couldn't decide if he wanted to kiss Jack again or punch the satisfied smirk off his face. "What question would that be?" He hated the breathless sound of his own voice.

"You know what question." His hand moved from holding Ianto's head still to resting at the back of his neck.

"I should go. I have a place to sleep at Madame Vastra's house."

"But she sent you home. Twice, in fact."

"She's tired of having me underfoot."

"It's your job to be under her feet, but she keeps sending you to be under mine."

"Well, if I'm in your way, I'll gladly move." He went to push past Jack and somehow wound up kissing him again, tasting his breath and his mouth. Jack moved them both until they were standing against a broken old work bench that dug into Ianto's thighs. If they weren't careful, they'd rock the bench and knock over the lamp, and a fire burning out of control might be a grand metaphor for how he felt, but he wasn't keen on experiencing a real one.

He pushed Jack away. "Not here. We'll wind up burning down the shed."

"Come on," Jack said, taking his hand. Ianto expected to be taken back to Jack's shabby flat, but instead they walked through the chilly night air to a park. Jack tugged him down to the ground in a spot shaded from the wind by large topiary displays, removing his own coat as a quick blanket for the hard ground.

"You can't be serious. We'll be seen for sure."

"Unlikely. These are the private gardens of someone I know. No policemen, no curious onlookers, no lamps." Jack said the last word biting into the cord of Ianto's neck.

The night air had cooled Ianto's head and reluctantly, he pulled back again. "You should go home. I should go back to Madame's."

"It's fine," Jack insisted. "Besides, what's a little chance of public exposure if not an extra temptation?" He chuckled in his throat, bending in for more kisses.

"Something else I've heard before." He pushed Jack away with one hand, and got back to his feet.

"What is it now?"

"You. This." He waved his hand but kept his voice low. "I shouldn't have ever contacted you."

"You're worried about that? Don't. I was a Time Agent. I'm professionally trained not to cause ripples in the timeline. We'll be fine."

"I don't mean the timeline." He looked at Jack. This Jack had no idea what was in store. "Yes, I've slept with you in my past. That's obvious. And I want to sleep with you now."

"Also obvious." Prat.

"But if I sleep with you, and something goes wrong in two days, then what? Jack, I don't want your first time with me to be my last with you."

Jack rolled his eyes. "This again."

"Again? I haven't told you this before."

Jack picked up his coat from the ground, dusted it off, and put it back on, shivering warmth back into the heavy black fabric. "You don't want. Ever since I met you, everything has been about what you want. You want to go home. You want your time machine to work. You want two women who've shown you nothing but kindness to get together not because you think they'd enjoy each other's company, but because you want them to reset the mess you've made. You got us involved in a plague because of what you wanted. You didn't care about the people who were sick. Everything was all about you."

Ianto took a step backwards, each word a blow.

"That's not true. It's not all about me." He fumbled for his mobile. "My friends."

"Yeah. Your friends. How well are they doing in your future?" Jack stood there, angry and hurt. He hadn't been angry after, not with Toshiko cold on the medical slab where he'd carried her, not with Owen nothing more than static over the comm. He'd been cold, and silent, and broken with every death he'd spent between one day and the next, for nothing.

"They're dead." It didn't matter. He was desperate to reset the timeline, but his friends would still be dead. Owen and Toshiko, Gwen and Martha. Nothing he did mattered.

"Then it's a lot of good you're doing them, isn't it? You want to go home. I want to get back to the one place I felt was home. What do you think _they_ want?" He didn't mean their future mutual (even if Jack didn't know that) friends.

"I don't know," he admitted. He'd spent the last few days associating with both women, and he didn't know what either really wanted.

"There's a shock."

Jack started walking in the vague direction of home. Ianto didn't know whether to follow him, or go back to his own small bed at Vastra's. Without a better plan, he followed Jack. They didn't speak for some time, a cold silence between them as they meandered down dark streets.

"I do pay attention," Ianto said after a while.

Jack didn't reply.

"I know what you want. It's my job to pay attention to what you want, and fetch it before you ask."

"Can it with the spoilers." He did slow his pace.

"I know how much you want to see the TARDIS again. I also know how much you want to know what happened to your brother."

Jack turned on him suddenly, and Ianto stumbled back. "Don't. Don't say a word about that to me." All his tells were visible, whether he knew or not. Ianto backed down.

"I know you want the Doctor to be proud of you. I also know what you really want is to be proud of yourself, and you know you're the harsher judge. I know you want to have sex with almost every person you meet, not because you're some kind of sex addict or because you're allergic to commitment, but because it's as natural as breathing is to you, and I know you want to get away from a planet and a culture that seems hell-bent on telling you that you can't."

Jack's hands were in his pockets now. He faced away from Ianto. They continued to walk. Ianto noticed the turn off he'd have to take to go back to Vastra's home. He ignored it in favour of staying with Jack.

"You want your mortality back. You want to know your life is worth something more than a two-bit con artist. You want to meet someone who can save you from yourself, and you look inside every new person you meet, hoping they'll do and being disappointed each time as they turn out to be just as self-centred and damaged as everyone else you know. The more you want them to be the right person, the more it hurts you when you accept they're not."

Ianto took Jack's arm, linking with his. "You want a one-night stand, and you want a lifetime with someone who understands you, and you want someone who understands that sometimes you want a one-night stand. But what you want most of all is someone who gets you and is enough like you to want to join in on those one-night stands."

They passed an alley. Instinct made Ianto pull back, and Jack held with him. At the far end, a man menaced a woman of very small stature, leaning against her as she trembled. Jack and Ianto exchanged glances. This was what got Ianto into trouble before, but he doubted that would stop him now. He knew for a fact it wouldn't stop Jack, because even when Jack was a fuck-up, he was still a damn hero. Ianto hated him a little for that, but he loved him far more, the bastard.

Fighting the power of that emotion was pointless, and always had been.

"Ready?" Jack whispered.

The darkness rent in two, and a deeper shadow emerged, with a long, sharp sword and a precise motion. The stranger cleaved the man's arm off, and bade his would-be victim to run.

As the shadow moved again, Ianto saw a hint of green scales.

"We should help," he said.

"No," said Jack more sensibly. "We should leave her to her work." They hung back, shadowing the girl who'd emerged from the alley at a run, escorting her without her knowledge until she let herself into one of the anonymous boardinghouses that filled this area of the city.

"I'm still angry with you," Jack said.

"Yep."

"You don't know everything I want."

"Nope." They were nearly back at the flat.

"You're smiling."

"Yes."

Their building was in sight, and together, they climbed the stairs, passing by and through the other units where the many tenants slept. Jack's flat was separated from the other ten on this floor by a thin wall that was more wallpaper than thin plaster. As soon as the door shut, Ianto removed Jack's coat and began removing the rest of his clothes.

"Hey. I told you I was still angry."

"I heard."

"And you turned me down. Several times."

"I did." He had Jack's cravat gone and his shirt open. He raked his nails across skin. Jack neither helped nor hindered him, but he did gasp delightfully when Ianto bit softly at his pectoral muscle.

"What if I said I don't want you now?"

"I'd stop, have one at the wrist myself, then go to sleep. So please tell me if you don't want me." His hands were busy with the intricacies of Jack's flies. Fucking Victorian clothes, how did they work?

"You said you didn't want my first to be your last."

"I don't. So we'd best have two or three goes before I leave, shouldn't we?"

Jack said nothing, but for the third time tonight, he led Ianto to press him against a convenient surface. This time it was his bed, and this time, Ianto didn't object, even when the neighbours complained about the noise.

* * *

He appeared for work early, a smile in his step and breakfast very nearly not burnt when he brought it to Madame's bedroom on a tray.

"Good morning," she said, gratefully accepting her first infusion of tea in its dainty cup.

"Good morning, ma'am."

"You seem happy."

"Yes, ma'am. Just pleased to have such a bright day." Tomorrow would be the attack. Today, he was pleasantly tired, and proud of himself in the way he so rarely could be when he left Jack dead asleep after wearing him out in bed.

"And how are your friends?"

"I haven't spoken to them this morning. If you'd like, I can ask Jenny and Strax to call on you later."

"No need. I am sure I will see them again."

"Ma'am, what do you think of Miss Jenny?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm eager to know your opinion." He didn't hold much hope, not after Jenny had so thoroughly disregarded Vastra. "She's a lovely young woman, don't you think?"

"Mm. I have such trouble telling humans apart. She seems very taken with you." Her face looked less than pleased.

"Oh. Yes. She and I talked yesterday about that. She thought we had developed an understanding, and I had to tell her that wasn't the case."

"Because of your relationship with the prostitute?"

Ianto blinked, stunned. "Excuse me, ma'am?"

"Was I indiscreet? I know humans are so odd about their mating. But you live with him, and you came in here this morning reeking of his scent. I'd hoped you weren't playing on that nice girl's affections."

"No, ma'am. She is my friend, and I like her, but as you indicated," he coughed, "my interests are elsewhere at the moment."

"Ah."

"Do you like her, ma'am?"

It was Vastra's turn to be startled. "Mr. Jones, you are presuming."

"Sorry, ma'am. Only, she is very sweet, with a kind and brave heart, and she's charming. Don't you agree?"

Vastra's face went sad. She set aside her tray, and sat up. She wore a long dressing gown, demure as any lady, and suddenly he was aware of her as an old thing, someone who had lived for millions of years. He wondered how lonely she must be.

Ianto knelt in front of her, fetching her slippers and meeting her eyes. "Madame, what do you want?"

"My red gown, I think."

"Of course. But I meant, what do you want from your life? I know you hunt the streets at night, helping the helpless. You want justice, and you want to show mercy to those who receive no mercy from their lives."

She blinked at him slowly, inspecting him. "You were in the alley last night."

"We both were. You seemed to have the situation covered."

"What I want," she said, "is someone to have my back when I fight. That man got up and tried to club me with his own arm. Idiot."

"Oh. Sorry. Yes, we should have stayed to help."

"Yes, you should have." She watched him as he sorted through the gowns in her wardrobe. "I also want servants who know how to serve. Your cookery leaves much to be desired."

He smiled. "Jack tells me that all the time."

"If I told you I wouldn't be averse to a pretty young lass around the house, would you be shocked?"

He glanced down at himself. "You told me I reek of male prostitute. What do you think, ma'am?"

She stood, accepting the red gown he handed to her. "I think you should invite her to tea this afternoon, as my guest."

* * *

Jenny was busy organising their flat slash clinic slash secret hideout when she heard the carriage outside. Quickly, she shoved three sharp pins into her hair and checked that her blade was strapped to her forearm. Carriages were difficult pickings, but she'd take what she could. Strax was off at the shops replenishing his supplies, although he wasn't much for robbery regardless.

Her conscience bothered her on these occasions, but only just. She'd been turned out of good work more than once because of her strange unwillingness to permit a master's wandering hands or a mistress's birch switch anywhere near her. Turned out without references, finding a new position had been difficult. After the third try, with nothing more to show for it than a police record and a now former employer with a broken nose, she'd decided plucking pigeons was a better life. The Doctor had come to her rescue during her first attempted robbery, unbeknownst to him. After that, her goals had shifted: steal what she could from those what could afford it, give it to them as didn't have anything. Strax became her ally, doing his own part to stitch up the poor souls who crawled onto their doorstep. They'd had a brief discussion when they'd received the invitation to Madame Vastra's house. Robbing the lady blind would be bad business and easy to trace, but she doubtless wouldn't miss the silver that had found its way up Jenny's sleeves as she'd helped Ianto clean.

A carriage, showing up in front of their digs? That was asking for a quick nab.

To her surprise when she stepped outside, the carriage was Madame Vastra's. Behind it, she could see the regulars lining up, examining exactly where they'd latch on and which part of the genteel driver they'd cut open. She waved to him, then gestured them away with the signal: leave this one alone, there'll be trouble otherwise.

"Miss Jenny," said Parker, stepping down from his box. "I was sent to fetch you." He opened the door.

"Oh." She looked around, wondering if she ought to pretend to get her hat or similar, but she was wearing her hat and ready to travel. "Thank you," she managed, taking his hand to climb inside.

* * *

The first indication that things were going awry came as Ianto heard an explosion outside. He ran to the window, but was thrown back when another blasted the glass, cutting him.

"Fuck," he said, then shouted, "Madame!" He hurried to find her. He wasn't surprised to discover the damage to the hothouse where she climbed to her feet in streaming sunlight, now choking with smoke. "Are you hurt?"

"I'll live. You're injured."

He wiped his face with his sleeve, and came back with blood. Not much. He'd inspect the damage later. He was due for more scars. "What's happening?"

"God only knows." Together they stepped outside. To Ianto's horror, four tiny ships zoomed past them, streaking through the sky.

"It's the Lysans."

"Who?"

"They're aliens, ma'am. They were set to invade, but they're early."

"You know this how?"

"I'm from the future. I know things. Get back inside, ma'am. You're in danger out here."

Vastra stayed where she stood. "If my city is facing an invasion, I must protect her people. Fetch my swords."

Swords against an invading army? "I don't suppose you happen to have a laser cannon as well?"

"Swords, Mr. Jones. I'd been hoping to teach you their basic use. Am I right in assuming you've never touched one?"

He reached into his suit, where his holster stayed under his suit jacket. "I have my own weapon. I only have a few bullets."

"Which is why a sword is more useful. Hurry."

Together, they ran back inside to gather weapons.

* * *

Jack looked up at the first explosion over the city. He'd awakened alone, and spent a while alone in his bed, wondering what he'd got himself into with this handsome young man who seemed to know every erogenous cell on Jack's body. He'd assumed they'd had a tumble or two in the future, because he did get around to sleeping with most people he knew. Ianto'd been right on that. But Ianto had been right in far more ways, as though he'd made an intensive study of every kink and interest Jack had. A few shags wouldn't explain how well he'd known where to touch Jack, nor for precisely how long and when to back away so as to stir him up further until they'd both collapsed in an intoxicated puddle.

Interesting, and far more dangerous to know about his future than time cars and mobile phones.

The second explosion saw him out of bed and half-dressed. If the Lysans were here early, that meant the whole plan was in jeopardy. He was coming to enjoy the prospect of having Ianto around long-term, but he had a bad feeling that if this didn't work, Ianto not only wouldn't stay with him, but he'd never have been here.

Time travel. Feh. There were days Jack wished he'd never sucked off that Time Agency recruiter to get an interview.

* * *

Strax's head bobbed up as soon as the explosion sounded. He grinned, dropping his purchases to the ground.

"Mr. Strax," said the apothecary, who continued to believe Strax was from some foreign country and as such spoke to him slowly and loudly despite the fact that Strax had a better command of English than he did. "Are you all right?"

"Better!" He lifted his purchases again, because sixpence was sixpence. "Hold these for me. Should I die in glorious battle, send them to Jenny Flint, care of the usual address. A tip for your trouble." Strax handed the apothecary a coin.

Then he shouted "Sontar-HA!" and ran off in hopes of dying in combat.

* * *

Madame Vastra stepped out onto the thrumming streets which were full of frightened apes. The Doctor had shown her the beauty of these savage creatures, drawing her out of the depths of her grief for her lost sisters and into a noble fight. She longed for companionship, but each time she thought she'd found a friend, she was wrong. The sweet-faced maids she hired vanished after a few short days. Parker told her they ran off, frightened of her, and indeed they'd all trembled just at the sight of her.

The callow youth at her side now, barely able to hold his sword by the proper end, had been an interesting mystery, one now solved. Although a traveller from the future might make her a fine companion, he had no interest in remaining here. That Sontaran had piqued her interest, and his perky assistant distractingly so. Vastra rarely thought of apes as anything other than friends; she'd be as likely to consider wedding a greyhound as she would a man. Yet and still, she could not deny the entrancing pull of soft limbs and a firm bosom that reminded her so of the comfort of piling into a warm bed with her sisters.

She shook her head. To business, and then she could send round for Jenny. Perhaps this woman wouldn't run away.

"Tell me what you know of these Lysans."

"Not much. Jack's the expert. He said something about salt water."

"Then let us make our way to the river."

* * *

The coach rattled through the streets as the buildings shook with another explosion. Jenny, jostled to and fro in her seat, scrambled to the window for a better look. "What's going on?"

"No idea," said the driver.

From her new vantage point, she saw the street they were on, recognised a part of the city that was not anywhere near Vastra's fine house. "Where did you say we were going?"

"Mr. Jones said he'd meet you at our destination. He needs your help with this situation."

She sat back, paying closer attention to their route and to the commotion outside. The summons had come before the first explosion. Had Ianto known about it? She wondered, and wondered more at the hurried pace of the driver.

They reached a secluded spot near the docks and came to a halt. The horse panted from the exertion, but Parker didn't stop to rub the poor creature down before opening the door for her.

"Where are we?"

A hand grabbed her upper arm with such force she knew the fingers would leave bruises. "Somewhere no-one will hear you."

* * *

tbc


	7. Chapter 7

Ianto swore and ducked at another blast. Through the haze, he'd sworn he'd seen something Strax-shaped with a large laser weapon shooting at the clouds, but God alone knew if he was hitting anything.

"We need to find Jack," he said. Not only was he their best hope with the Lysans, Ianto needed to get to his car or he wasn't getting home. Home seemed farther away than ever.

"We shall. Gather these humans and tell them to run for cover."

Ianto watched them running. "I think they have that handled."

One of the Lysan ships came in for a landing, crushing an already-dilapidated tenement. Vastra ran to them, shouting a cry with her sword raised. Ianto followed, his cry more of fear. Two squishy blue aliens emerged from their vessel, only to have limbs sliced neatly from their forms. He watched her work for a moment, then set his own useless sword aside and grabbed the three nearest humans he could find.

"Help me. There will be people trapped under this."

He was met with frightened stares, and people who were surely about to run. He added, "And those who don't want to help can deal with my boss when she's done killing these aliens, yeah?"

He suddenly found himself with a surfeit of volunteers.

* * *

Jack headed directly to where he'd asked Strax to stash the car. For a moment, he again contemplated just climbing in, driving head-on into a Lysan's cannon, and zooming forward one hundred years. The last time he'd met the Doctor, it had been courtesy of a stolen time machine. Surely another wouldn't upset his karmic balance terribly?

He still wasn't used to having a proper conscience. On days like these, it weighed heavy on him, and he spent more time than he should those days watching the world from the bottom of a glass.

The Doctor wouldn't like that much, either.

The trick was getting the car up to speed just as the Lysans fired. He'd rigged the motor to operate again, but catalytic converters were ancient tech which he'd barely studied. Strax hasn't exploded when he turned the key. That didn't mean the whole thing wouldn't fly apart as Ianto drove at breakneck speeds through the city during an invasion which Jack really ought to think about stopping.

He'd mapped this out in his head and on a piece of paper. Given the acceleration needed, he was pretty sure that driving along the shore would work, if the fleeing humans didn't head there themselves. He'd be drawing the Lysans in that direction, and he'd have to hope the tide was high enough to make the river salty enough to repel the aliens.

Jack climbed into the car. As in any other cockpit, he felt instantly at ease. If the TARDIS was the home of his heart, the driving seat or cockpit of any vehicle was like the safety of a grandmother's house. Longing for this, he started the time car and drove her into position.

* * *

"Let me go," said the girl. She wasn't squealing yet, nor trembling. He'd have to do something about that.

"Shut your mouth if you want to live."

Buford Parker had learned some time ago that no-one cared what he wanted, and no-one asked what he did. If he turned up to work on time with his clothes freshly scrubbed and his body bathed, not even his reptilian employer cared to notice what he did with his time. He'd thought she would have observed how the young maids never stayed more than a few days. For some great detective, she believed his quick tales that they feared her and left, but she had so much trouble with human emotions. Why wouldn't she believe her monster of a face drove them away? Most had walked out on their own feet, eventually, except that last lass. He hadn't meant it. He liked the feel of his hand around a small throat, was all. He hadn't meant to squeeze so hard.

He should have spaced the maids out more, but now she'd brought in that mandrake of a butler.

When they didn't have maids in, there were always the dollymops with their painted faces. He could pick out the hungry ones who'd follow him back to a dark corner well away from their friends, and wouldn't snitch him out later. These too had stopped being fun after the maid. Even leaving welts all over some poxed fanny, he'd only found his end thinking about how she'd flailed and choked. He'd considered the complexity involved in recreating the experience, even going so far as to stake out which Judy he'd bring out here to his secret place where no-one would find them.

Since he'd seen this girl, a little older than he liked but unspoiled, his thoughts had turned back to the one he'd killed. They had much the same manner. Jenny had even donned her apron, a sight which had forced Parker to take a breath out in the stables when he'd seen her reaching for the duster. She would make a fine squeak as he hurt her. Holding her tightly now, he felt his pulse race with excitement in his ears. She'd struggle. He knew she would, biting and fighting him as he enjoyed her.

This area by the docks had been abandoned. He could keep her locked up here for weeks. Months. But as her breath came faster, with the rise and fall of her breast under her neat corset, he knew he wouldn't pass up his opportunity to feel her life draining away under his body.

"You're in a world of trouble," she warned him.

"Jones isn't coming for you, so don't even let your silly head imagine he will." Parker had spied into the kitchen yesterday when Mr. Jones had been alone with his "friend." He'd tell sweet Jenny when he was done, let her know her catamite sweetheart would find himself in prison as soon as Parker mentioned to his own friends in the Yard. Two problems sorted at once, he thought. No more annoying butler, and no-one to ask questions like why his winsome companion had stopped calling.

The trembling began, shaking up her arm. He breathed in, intoxicated by her fear. Jenny asked, "Does your mistress know what you are?"

"Does it matter? Perhaps I let her watch."

Jenny frowned. "No. You clean yourself too much. You're hiding from her. Beat up some street girl, come home smelling of roses. That's you. You know she'll kill you when she finds out."

"She's too stupid." He grabbed her by both shoulders and pulled her in tight for a kiss.

The motion yanked the blade that had shot out of her sleeve directly into his abdomen. Parker gasped, pushing her away as she dragged herself closer, never losing the expression on her face. "I had to ask," she said, jerking her arm up in a rush of exquisite agony. His blood poured out through his gut. He couldn't speak through the pain.

As his vision greyed, he heard her say, "I had to know if I had to kill her as well." She raised her arm as he hunched over, one arm thrown out to ineffectively block her very precise, and very lethal, blow.

* * *

The aliens centred in on their location. Ianto hadn't noticed at first, being too busy with the impromptu rescue. Yet, as he worked, lifting broken bricks and digging for those he could hear crying under the rubble, he began to see more and more blasts in their area, scaring away many would-be rescuers.

Beside them, in the street, Strax had joined them, firing on each vessel with a delighted cry. As the Lysan craft fell, Madame Vastra made short work of their crew, her sword wet with gore.

Ianto pushed aside a broken plaster wall, and found a man huddled around his two children. His helpers moved in, helping the trio to safety. Strax or another doctor could look at them when time allowed. Ianto thought he'd caught a glimpse of Ignatius and Doctor Brown hurrying determinedly through the fleeing crowd, bent on assisting at another destroyed building.

"Hold this position!" Vastra shouted to Strax, as more Lysans came their way.

Ianto turned to the nearest rescue worker. "Keep at this." He lifted his abandoned sword. He'd likely cut off his own head if he wasn't careful. He had to lure one out, though. He had to get to the car, get up to speed, and get shot. As much as he wanted to help here, that had to be his priority.

Vastra cried out. Ianto was already at her side, as Strax set down his weapon and began pounding on it with his fist. "Blasted thing always jams when it's hot."

"Ma'am, how bad is it?" A blast had glanced off her, leaving a scorch down one side, and her sword arm gravely injured.

"I can fight," she said through gritted teeth, lifting her sword with her left arm. A second later, she tossed the broken katana aside in disgust. Without a word, Ianto handed his to her. She'd be better with his sword in her off hand than he would using both good ones.

Her breath came in gasps. Strax paused in his abuse of his weaponry to examine her arm. "I can heal this, but not if we're dead."

"Mr. Jones, is this how the world ends?" she asked him, gathering her strength as more ships loomed into view. They would lock onto their position any moment.

"No."

"They are _aliens_." Insulted pride stood high in her voice, and outrage. Her people owned the Earth before humans evolved. How dare these interlopers come from the skies and attack her home.

"Aliens invade us a lot. Sometimes they're vicious, sometimes they're lost tourists. They're interesting. They don't end the world, not here."

"No," she said, standing with the sword raised in challenge, and a growl in her throat. "Not here."

Over the shouts and screams, Ianto heard two noises. One was a carriage running out of control. The other was a car engine. Both were getting closer.

Moments later, the carriage won, skidding to a stop on the corner. Vastra only cast a quick glance. "Ah. Parker has arrived."

Instead of Parker, Jenny stepped down from the driver's box, her dress covered with blood. "I thought I'd find you lot here with all the bother."

Ianto went to ask her if she was all right, but she was already digging inside the carriage. "Strax, I went by our flat. I didn't know which ones to bring, so I brought 'em all." She tossed him a large pulse rifle. Another appeared, one Ianto recognised from long-term storage in sub-basement 2.

"I'll take that one," he said, grateful for the feel of a gun. "Madame?"

"My sword will do." She watched as Jenny swung a third rifle that was more tiny cannon, and fired on the closest Lysan ship. She smiled. "My dear, you may have arrived just in time to save us all. Tell me, where is Parker?"

Jenny made a face. "If I could explain that to you later, ma'am, it'd be best." Her eyes flicked down to the stains on her dress.

Vastra jerked back. "Did he suffer?"

"I made sure he didn't."

Before she could ask more, Jack brought the time car into position with a screech of tyres and a spin that would have given Jeremy Clarkson an erection. Jack popped out with his trademark grin. "Did I arrive in time to save the day?"

"No," said Vastra and Jenny at once. They stood next to each other, making a rather pretty, if blood-soaked, picture.

Jack pouted before he handed Ianto the keys. "Go. It's a straight shot from here to the river. If I know these guys, one will chase you. Get to speed, hold it there, and look like a target."

"Thank you." Ianto closed his eyes. "Jack, the night I left, something happened. It's important you know."

"Spoilers. Don't tell me. I'll see it soon enough." He clasped Ianto's arms. "It's been good knowing you, Ianto Jones. I'll see you again." Jack kissed him, quickly but firmly.

He looked at Jack, and behind him to the other three. Strax was mouthing something like, "Man one," but he was preoccupied with his gun.

Ianto handed the keys back to Jack. "I'm staying."

"You can't stay. You've already messed up the timeline by being here. If you stay longer, you'll wind up rewriting everything."

"I can't go," he said in a softer voice, hoping Jack heard him over the reports of the guns. Their friends blasted away at the invaders. "I can't leave you here like this. Besides, the two of them aren't together yet."

"Don't worry about it. They seem to be getting on fine."

"And that's the worst part. Jack, they're Torchwood's first case. Torchwood London will kill the three of them. That's how the site earns their charter."

Jack pulled away from him, dark clouds covering his face. "You knew this whole time?"

"I'm not completely rubbish at time travel. Just mostly rubbish."

Jack turned back to the two women. Jenny had brought down another ship. Vastra didn't look well, but she did appear determined as she stalked towards the small pod. "When?"

"Ten years from now." Long enough for Madame Vastra to be forever in love with her beautiful companion, for her to have no other thought than to go in after her mate should she be captured by a man with a grudge against non-humans.

"But if they're not, your future falls apart, and you can't go home."

"Exactly." Amid the explosions, his own voice sounded hollow. He brought his hand before his face, but everything had gone strange. Had he been shot?

Jack stared at him. "Ianto?"

He could feel himself fading out. He'd be in two places at once, one stuck in the past due to an accident at Torchwood, the other somewhere unknown, unknowable. The rifle fell through his hands.

"It's too late."

Like a ghost, he watched. Around him, the laser blasts grew more concentrated. One struck Jack, killing him instantly. Another ricocheted, hitting Strax in the leg. Ianto couldn't move. He'd fade away here, and someone else would replace him in another life, in another time. But as the cold clenched him, he knew that wasn't the case, whatever he'd told himself. Without Torchwood London and thus later Torchwood Cardiff, the world had indeed come to an end at the hands of some threat yet to come. Perhaps he'd been killed. Perhaps he'd never been born. Tosh, Owen, _Lisa_, they'd faded away from history, not to other lives but into this same non-existence oiling through him.

The laser fire began to focus, now that the Lysans had determined where the resistance came from, and they bore down like angry wasps.

"Run," Vastra told Jenny, pushing her. "Get to safety."

"There isn't any safety, ma'am," she said, hefting her own rifle with a grim expression.

Vastra watched her, exasperated, as Jenny poured a stream of laser fire at their attackers. "You are holding that incorrectly."

"Won't matter in a few minutes, ma'am." One of her shots brought down another ship. Ianto saw a second ship land. Three aliens emerged, squishy and annoyed, to bring the fight to them.

Neither woman saw them, focused as they were on the zippy little ships. He leaned heavily against the side of the car, but he felt it give in a sickening fashion, as though his body passed through the metal. He tried shouting. His voice came out in a whisper, unheard over the noise of the scene around him. With no strength, he pushed off anyway, shoving his rapidly-vanishing body at the oncoming attackers who crept up on his friends from behind. They'd be slaughtered.

He stumbled in front of the Lysans. They walked through him, and he fell to the ground. The squishy guy in the lead aimed his weapon at the back of Jenny's head.

With no strength, no energy, no air, and no hope, Ianto shouted in a whisper, "Jenny!"

Vastra turned. She shouted a war cry, and lifting her sword, parried the first blast. Then she swooped like a dancer, neatly slicing an arc of destruction through the three of them, and swinging back to deliver the coup. All had been with her left arm; the right hung useless at her side. Jenny kept firing, but glanced back at her, seeing the carnage.

She smiled.

Jack had described to him, when asked one night in the dark after a session of not-very-comforting comfort sex, how it felt to be dragged back into his life. His veins thrummed with blood, he'd said. His chest compressed and sucked in air, burning his throat with the first gasp. Broken glass scratched over every centimetre of his skin and inside his guts as each individual cell suddenly and painfully knitted back to its pristine state of rebirth.

Ianto's return to life from near-nothingness was exactly like that, and exactly the opposite. He'd never be able to describe the sensation of solidifying and coming fully alive. As he rocketed to his feet, he heard Jack's first gasp of resurrection, and reckoned Jack would understand regardless. He helped Jack up, and searched the ground for his abandoned rifle.

"Ah, the two of you finally joined us," said Vastra, her attention returned to the skies.

"Three," said Strax, huffing. He'd bandaged his leg expertly, and had his own weapon trained on the incoming ships. "I believe we should go on the attack."

This drew the attention of all four. "Why?" Jenny asked.

"How?" Ianto added.

"We will have the advantage of surprise! They will never expect us to bring the campaign to the skies."

Jack said, "That's because we can't fly. Also, we'd be obliterated before we made contact."

Vastra said, "Some of us would, Captain." They shared a look. So she had seen everything.

"Precisely why they would not expect such an attack!"

Jack said, "Ianto, take the car. Do like we planned, and drive to the river."

"But..."

"We've got this." Jack tilted his head at the Paternoster trio, all of whom wore matching expressions of determination. Ianto kept his eyes from pointing out that Madame was holding hands with Jenny. He was relieved, and alive.

And heartbroken.

"Stay safe," he told them, wishing he could say more. He climbed into the car without another word.

The dash hadn't changed. The controls fit his hands as easily as ever. She purred to life under his touch with the turn of a key. He paused. The controls were set to the exact time he'd left. If he arrived early, say half an hour, he'd easily have time enough to get Gwen and Martha out of the doomed warehouse before the cultists returned. Quickly, he punched in the new time. He gave one last look to his four friends, then he screeched his way into reverse, spinning around.

He could say this for alien invasions: the streets were cleared as everyone had gone underground or into hiding. Ianto floored it.

Buildings that would never see vehicles of this speed go whizzing by again stood still as photographs as he roared past. In the rear view, he could see one of the remaining Lysan ships break off from the cluster and give chase.

He peeled out faster, praying to any god who'd listen not to throw a small child or similar in his path whilst he sped, finally ticking over to 88 KPH. He maintained his pace, trying to hold at the red line on the speedometer.

The Lysan ship fired.

It missed.

Ianto found his way blocked by a fallen pile of masonry. He hit the brakes, nearly colliding with the broken tenement. The Lysan ship shot past him. "Shit shit shit." The car shook, unhappy with the abuse. He eased it out again, nosing around the destruction. Did he have the space to get up to speed again? There were no other options. He gunned the engine again.

The Lysan didn't pursue him this time, veering off to rejoin the others attacking Jack's position. "Fuck."

Ianto reversed the car and turned around. He zoomed back down the road he'd just come. "See me. Come on, see the nice car, you slithery blue bastards."

At last, the small ship noticed him, swinging around for another go. Ianto dropped into a hard reverse once more, surely killing the transmission. He backed into something that gave with a wet thud. With no time to check behind him, he dropped into first, grinding the gears. Then he punched it as the Lysan fired where he'd been.

The car screamed down the road, juttering over the cobblestones. The shocks were on their last legs. The body of the car had taken damage from the first impact, and he wasn't sure if it would continue to hold together. How much stress did a jaunt through the Time Vortex put on a secondhand frame out of the decline of Detroit?

The Lysan fired, hitting just ahead of him. 75 KPH. 80 KPH.

Ahead, he could see the road down to the river's edge. If he wasn't hit, he'd have to turn and race along the embankment, where scores of people had fled. 85 KPH.

He heard the whine of the Lysan's weapon. He watched the speed click over to the red line marking 88 KPH. He wondered if he had a future to go back to.

He was overtaken by white flame.

* * *

Mary Dalton, aged ten, watched the whole thing from where her mum and her gran had dragged her and her three smelly brothers when the weird stuff started to happen. When she was a grandma herself, she'd pull the little ones onto her lap, and she'd tell them what she saw:

- A shiny black thing like a fish, but more like one of them automobiles, sped down Kings Road as fast as anything,

- and a silvery thing like a bird, but maybe one of them aeroplanes, flew at it, like the others had been flying, spitting light.

- and as the car neared the river, one of the lights from the aeroplane hit it,

- and the car went all white-like and vanished,

- but the aeroplane kept going and crashed into the river, where it sank,

- then we all shouted hurrah.

The rest of the aeroplanes were gone after that, most of them exploding in a pile of smoke and not much else, especially after an odd man, foreign he said when Mary asked, dropped little balls inside them. He smiled a lot.

There was a fine lady, her face hidden behind a demure veil, who called orders for people to help clean up and find those who might be trapped. A girl helped her, assisting as the odd foreign man patched up the injured. And there was another man, a handsome man who made Mary blush when he winked at her then directed her mum to take her family home.

Mary could not think of a single person she'd known who'd died in the whole event, and since the buildings that had fallen were all in parts of the city that Themselves never bothered much with, there wasn't even much of a stir. Some people came by, weeks later. She remembered them because they were all Scottish. Belonged to some College or Institute or something. The Scottish people asked loads of questions and they even handed out boiled sweets after they got their answers. Mary couldn't eat sweets because of her bad tooth. After the questions and the sweets, hardly anyone seemed to remember the silver aeroplane or the black car.

She'd stopped talking about them after her mum threatened Mary with the switch if she didn't stop telling stories. She did wonder about the one dead body she'd seen, though.

* * *

They gathered around the sad lump of clothes and flesh.

Strax didn't need to take a pulse, but propriety demanded. "The laser appears to have evaporated half his skull."

Jack made a face. He'd seen all this before, of course. He'd also seen skidmarks before, and noticed how these ended directly at the body before shooting off again. If this fellow had been backed into by, say, a nicely-tuned vehicle that wouldn't be invented for years, perhaps hard enough to stun him, then he would have made a very easy target for the Lysans to pick off.

Speaking of picking, he leaned down to the man's clothes, but Jenny's hands were faster.

Madame Vastra startled. "You are surely not going to rob the poor man's corpse?"

Jack and Jenny exchanged glances. Dead men had no use for purses. "No," Jack said. "We should look for identification." He noticed Jenny slip her hand into his pockets anyway for loose coins. He'd have done the same. "Hm. Reginald Poopin. That's someone who was teased at school." He knew the name from somewhere.

He frowned. From his own pockets, a bit stained from his untimely death, Jack removed two pamphlets. He set aside "A brief history of alien invasions in London, 1875-1900" and flipped through the other title that had caught his attention when he'd looked inside the boot of the time car the other day. He held the pamphlet up against the man's half-remaining face, comparing the corpse with the photostatic copy of an old photograph gracing the bottom of one side of the paper.

"Oops." That could be a much bigger issue than whether or not Vastra and Jenny shagged.

Vastra said, "Write down his name. I'll send a note of condolence to the family when I have the time." She sighed. "I understand this is hardly an issue of any worth, but I must say, I've lost both my driver and my only servant today. That will make things difficult."

Jack took a look at the pair to either side of her. "Something will work out, I'm sure. You might want to consider alien-hunting professionally."

Strax sputtered, "I beg to differ!"

"Only the bad aliens," said Jenny. "Right? The good aliens are interesting."

Jack watched them again, watched how naturally Jenny fit leaning against Vastra's side. "They are." He wiped his hands on Poopin's jacket and stood. "I should take this opportunity to say farewell. It's time I got back to Cardiff." That's where he'd be when he had his adventures. Ianto had as much as told him so.

"Really, Captain?" said Vastra. "I was hoping you'd stay. Your unique ability seems like it would be of good use, especially should I take your advice in careers."

He took her gloved hand, the one not in a makeshift sling, and kissed her knuckle. "When you need me, I'm a telegraph away. Keep in touch." For fun and because he could, he kissed Jenny on the head, and then Strax.

He wondered what kind of future Ianto would find himself in without a Sir Reginald Poopin to found his precious Torchwood London. He also wondered when Jenny would notice Jack had lifted Poopin's purse.

* * *

White light blinded him, and Ianto screamed. The car emerged into clear daylight, speeding towards the Embankment. Ianto wrenched the wheel, skidding as he flew towards the Thames. "Fuck. Fuck. Turn!"

He got the car spinning 180 degrees and still going as his foot was glued to the accelerator. With an effort, he yanked his leg away, but momentum pushed him forward into traffic. Rushed with adrenalin and terror, almost certain that he was home and wondering if that meant he'd died and this was a dream, he decelerated to a more normal speed, inching through London evening traffic like someone who hadn't been very, very late to work.

Oh God, he was back. Oh God, he was here. And oh God, he was early. He had to get back to the warehouse. Gwen and Martha were still alive. Jack was still alive. He gunned the engine again, but it gave up its last, sputtering and dying just as he crossed a rail.

"Shit." Ianto pounded on the dash. Nothing. He cranked the key, but the starter was dead. Whatever Jack in the past had done to fix the car, Ianto's mad journey through the cobblestone streets of Victorian London had killed it again.

Ianto got out, to the annoyed honks of the cars stuck behind him. He waved them on, starting to push, when he heard the sound.

"Oh fuck."

The train gates came down, and he was on the wrong side of them. "Fuck!" He tried pushing the car, but even if he could get it moving, he'd run into the gate.

The train was coming, and it wasn't stopping. He took one last look at the car. He legged it.

He should probably have known that attempting to hail a taxi whilst standing beside the ruin of his time car, bloody-faced, wearing Victorian dress, and waving a broken piece of coral was not going to end well.

* * *

Ianto heard the rumble from the exploding warehouse from three streets away. He ran as fast as he could, but it was too late, far too late. He wouldn't cry. Sobbing would accomplish nothing, would not bring the dead back be they dead one hundred years or one minute.

He crested the small hill, and stared.

There was the time car, zooming with someone inside that looked a lot like him. There were the fucking Saxon loonies, chasing him until his car vanished in a bright flash, then confused by his disappearance although they'd built the accursed thing.

And there were Gwen and Jack, armed to the teeth, steeping out from behind a skip, shouting at them to surrender now or they were going to blow their damn heads off. Martha stood to one side, shouting on her mobile for someone to get here NOW.

Ianto was very confused, if pleased to note how angry they all were. They thought he was dead. He was a bit chuffed to see, as it were, a preview of his funeral and know for a fact his friends were properly upset. He owned up to how petty that sounded. Still, it felt good to hang back a moment and watch as Jack rounded up the remaining cultists and Gwen went into copper mode on playing at arresting them before Jack could stuff them so full of Retcon they would forget their toilet training.

A figure moved over the tyre tracks he'd left behind. Before he could shout a warning, the figure rose. Ianto stumbled back a step.

"I'm definitely getting temporal readings here," Toshiko said, pushing her hair from her face. "Do we know where he went?"

Jack said, "Best guess? 1885."

"Good guess," said Ianto, scrambling down to join them.

He met three relieved faces and one somewhat amused one, who said, "You're late."

"Got held up by a train. Which reminds me..." He trailed off, unable to meet Jack's eyes.

"You destroyed the car."

"I did. A bit. Sorry."

"I spent how long fixing that thing?"

Gwen broke in, "When did you fix it, Jack?"

Martha said, "Bad guys. Focus. You can play Top Gear later." But the distraction had cost them their advantage. At once, the cultists shouted and ran. Several grabbed broken bricks from the ruins of the warehouse, and lobbed them hard.

"Duck!"

Ianto dodged the first brick. That put him in perfect line-up for a second to hit him hard on the temple. Everything went black.


	8. Epilogue

Epilogue

* * *

He woke up to the sound of the phone ringing, and groggily, he reached out to pick up the receiver. The warm body he met along the way prevented him from grabbing it. Ianto smiled, wondering when Jack had crawled into bed. He sat up to reach the phone, lifted the handset from the cradle long enough to hear "Good morning! This is your wake up call!" before he dropped it and let his head hit the pillow again.

His eyes drifted open, and shut, then popped open. He sat up hard, adrenalin drenching his system.

Beside him on the other pillow, Lisa mumbled, "Fucking concierge."

"Lisa?" he managed to ask in a breathless squeak.

"Urnf," she said, or something like it, yanking his pillow over to cover her own eyes like she always had.

Afraid, he prodded her shoulder: same warm, yielding yet gym-muscled flesh under her blue-grey t-shirt, same cute grunt that promised she would bat him away in another few seconds if he didn't knock it off. Ianto tossed the pillow. He took her shoulders in his hands, moving her to her back, and he kissed her. She even had the same morning breath she swore was his problem alone.

Lisa smiled around the kiss, and kissed him back for a second before pulling away. "Enough of that, now."

"You're here," he said, because he couldn't imagine explaining to her the terrible dream he'd had, of death and destruction, and time travelling cars. Come to think of it, most of what he remembered was taking on the eerie countenance of a bad dream, complete with dinosaurs and zombies. In another minute, his head would clear, and he'd remember he was some minor tour guide for a museum, and Lisa was his gorgeous wife.

The pleasant yet sad glimmer in her eyes said that might not be quite right, either.

"Of course I'm here. But I remind you that _my_ boyfriend doesn't mind me having the occasional drunk weekend with my ex, as long as he's convinced you're hopelessly head over heels for _your_ boyfriend."

Ianto lay his head on his own pillow again. The quickest check he could make told him he, too, wore rumpled clothes under the sheets. Lisa was alive. She had a boyfriend who wasn't him. He had a boyfriend. He touched his head, and felt a plaster wrapping. Bits of last night came back.

"I got hit on the head pretty hard," he said. "Boyfriend. Mine. A picture emerges. Tall, ridiculously good-looking, unfortunately aware of it, has no doubt propositioned you and your boyfriend several times?"

Lisa lay her own head on her own pillow. "I don't know what you see in him. All right, I know exactly what you see in him, but I think you're mad."

"Toss a lifeline to your concussed ex. Did he break us up?"

Lisa shook her head sadly as she made him open his eyes and stick out his tongue. "You know, if multiple doctors hadn't assured Jack you'd be fine as long as someone kept an eye on you last night, he'd have banged you into hospital instead of calling me up to babysit. You start in with the amnesia, and he certainly will."

"That's not a no."

"How's your headache?"

"Sore."

"I'm taking you downstairs. Get dressed." He let himself be pulled up, and she didn't object to one more quick kiss before she booted him into the en suite to change into fresher clothes.

Downstairs, the UNIT briefing had just broken up. Terror, out of proportion to the reality, shook him. Had he slept through his second meeting? Jack would be furious. But Lisa stopped to talk with two people he vaguely recognised, dressed as civilians rather than military.

"Any word?" she asked.

The taller of the two men shrugged. "Same as always. UNIT on our arses, complaints and turtles all the way down." Unexpectedly, he socked Ianto on the shoulder. "Your end came out all right. Commendation. Flash bastards." He smiled as he said the words, though.

"Oh." Ianto wasn't sure quite what to say. His head was still groggy, as though this was a fuzzy dream. Perhaps he should get checked out. The bloke's name was Gareth, wasn't it? Another Torchwood London casualty standing alive in front of him, smoothing his own hair. Ianto didn't miss the wedding band.

Then another voice joined them. "Well, if you twats would work harder, you'd wind up with shiny commendations of your own, wouldn't you?"

Ianto's breath sucked out of him like he'd been punched. "Owen?" He tried to make sense of the crazy image in front of him. "But you're…." It seemed rude to point out Owen was supposed to be dead. "You're in a suit."

Owen glanced down at his well-made if rumpled three-piece suit. "Yeah? What about it? I always wear a suit when I have to coordinate with UNIT wankers." Without preamble, he dragged Ianto closer. "Open your eyes and follow my fingers."

He'd no doubt resisted making this gesture through the meeting, and Ianto humoured him.

"Vision blurry? Headache?"

"Head hurts, my vision's fine."

"You'll live. No booze for a week, no driving for a day, no sex for a month."

Lisa said, "You'll kill him."

"Why no sex?"

"No reason," Owen said. "Just wanted to see if you'd believe me. You have your doctor's permission to go back to the site. Tell Jack I'll be along after the afternoon session."

Lisa rolled her eyes, leading Ianto out towards sunlight and coffee. "He really has to learn how to behave in public. Can't you do anything with him?"

"Never could," said Ianto. Bemused, he let Lisa shove a styrofoam cup of not-great coffee into his hand before she put him in a cab with a kiss on the forehead and a reminder he needed to come back to check out because she wasn't taking his things home with her again after the last time.

The warehouse was a ruin. Police tape covered everything, but Jack was clearly in charge of the scene. Beside him, Gwen pored over some scanner while Martha and Tosh discussed something.

Jack saw him and a smile lit his face. "You should be convalescing."

"Owen says I'm fine. Which is pretty interesting as Owen was dead when I left. Jack?"

"What?"

"What changed?" Ianto knew before he asked that Jack would say what he always did, that the twenty-first century was where it all happened, and he'd use the maddening 'everything changes' because God forbid Captain Jack Harkness give a straight answer.

Jack looked around them both. Then he shrugged. "A lot?"

* * *

Not all of the warehouse had been demolished by the blast. "It's an old Torchwood London holding," Jack explained. "It can take a lot of damage." He led Ianto, with hard hat, through the remnant of the building.

Ianto tapped his torch on. Fallen racks of jars greeted his eyes, and souvenirs from what had to be dozens if not hundreds of alien encounters. Only, these weren't quite right. No floating heads, or stuffed specimens. The wall of badly-filed pamphlets he passed included, along with "Gerald's New Genitals," titles such as, "Our Friends, the Atraxi," and "Learn Basic Enterian in Three Days."

Jack said quietly, "If it's alien, it's interesting."

"Well, yes."

"No." Jack pointed to a small plaque on a shelf, with 'If it's alien, it's interesting' engraved in bronze. "It's the motto."

"Well. Obviously. I knew that."

"No, you didn't," Jack said, gently. "There are going to be a lot of things you don't know, but I'll help you through."

"You changed all of it," Ianto said, wondering at this friendly new Torchwood London. Had Glasgow and Cardiff gone soft as well, or had they gone their separate ways?

"No. Just a few things here and there. You left a mess. I helped put the pieces back in place." He found a corridor half blocked with a fallen and twisted shelf. They budged it together, hefting the thing out of the way. "With a little help."

He dug into his pocket for two very old pieces of paper that once were pamphlets: one about alien invasions, one about the history of this branch of Torchwood.

"You stole those."

"Borrowed. See, I'm giving them back now." He handed both to Ianto.

"You shouldn't have read them."

"Time Agent, remember? I only took what I needed to know, and they didn't say much." He frowned. "They said nothing about Emily and Alice, for one example. Anyway, I thought you might like to see something. I checked last night to see if this part of the warehouse had survived."

Ianto followed him, curious, as they went into an old storage room with paintings on the walls. He lurched back, not wanting to see the painting of Poopin standing on Strax. Jack shone his own torch. There was a photograph, sepia-tone and old, blown up to portrait size. Three figures stared at the camera.

Of course Strax had tried to look stern. Even Jenny's face was serious. But Madame Vastra smiled across the years, finally pleased with him after all this time. The plaque at the bottom of the photograph read:

"Torchwood London, Est. 1895. The Founders."

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* * *

The End

* * *

Previous Reel_Torchwood fics:

Jack Harkness and the Chocolate Factory  
The Extraterrestrial  
The Day the Dragons Came (by Mica Davies, Age 7)  
Just Because They Protect You Doesn't Mean They Like You

* * *

My three favorite words are, "I liked this."


End file.
